Memories of Bethany

by John R. Macduff

XIX.

The Fig-Tree.

The hosannahs of yesterday had died away—the memorials of its triumph were strewed on the road across Olivet—as, early on the Monday morning, while the sun was just appearing above the Mountains of Moab, the Divine Redeemer left His Bethany retreat, and was seen retraversing the well-worn path to Jerusalem. Here and there, in the “olive-bordered way,” were Fig plantations. The adjoining village of Bethphage derived its name from the Green Fig.[29] Indeed, “fig-trees may still be seen overhanging the ordinary road from Jerusalem to Bethany, growing out of the rocks of the solid mountain, which, by the prayer of faith, might ‘be removed and cast into the (distant Mediterranean) Sea.’”[30] An incident connected with one of these is too intimately identified with the Redeemer’s last journeys to and from the home of His friend to admit of exclusion from our “Bethany Memories.” These memories have hitherto, for the most part, in connexion at least with our blessed Lord, been soothing, hallowed, encouraging. Here the “still small voice” is for once broken with sterner accents. In contrast with the bright background of other sunny pictures, we have, standing out in bold relief, a withered, sapless stem, impressively proclaiming, in unwonted utterances of wrath and rebuke, that the same hand is “strong to smite,” which we have witnessed so lately in the case of Lazarus was “strong to save.”

The eye of Jesus, as he traversed the rocky path with His disciples, rested on a Fig-tree. (Mark xi. 12, 13.) It seems not to have been growing alone, but formed part of a group or plantation on one of the slopes or ravines of Olivet. Its appearance could not fail to challenge attention. It was now only the Passover season (the month of April); summer—the time for ripe figs—was yet distant; and as it is one of the peculiarities of the tree that the fruit appears before the leaves, a considerable period, in the ordinary course of nature, ought to have elapsed before the foliage was matured. Jesus Himself, it will be remembered, on another occasion, spake of the putting forth of the fig-tree leaves as an indication that “summer was nigh.” It must have been, therefore, a strange and unusual sight which met the eye of the travellers as they gazed, in early spring, on one of these trees with its full complement of leaves—clad in full summer luxuriance. While the others in the plantation, true to the order of development, were yet bare and leafless, or else the buds of spring only flushing them with verdure, the broad leaves of this precocious (and we may think at first favoured) plant—the pioneer of surrounding vegetation—rustled in the morning breeze, and invited the passers-by to turn aside, examine the marvel, and pluck the fruit.

We may confidently infer that Jesus, as the Omniscient Lord of the inanimate creation, knew well that fruit there was none under that pretentious foliage. We dare not suppose that He went expecting to find Figs; far less, that in a moment of disappointed hope, He ventured on a capricious exercise of His power, uttered a hasty malediction, and condemned the insensate boughs to barrenness and decay. The first cursory reading of the narrative may suggest some such unworthy impression. But we dismiss it at once, as strangely at variance with the Saviour’s character, and strangely unlike His wonted actings. We feel assured that He literally, as well as figuratively, would not “break the bruised reed, nor quench the smoking flax.” He came, in all respects, “not to destroy, but to save.” Some deep inner meaning, not apparent on the surface of the inspired story, must have led Him for the moment to regard a tree in the light of a responsible agent, and to address it in words of unusual severity.

What, then, is the explanation? Our Lord on this occasion revives the old typical or picture-teaching with which the Hebrews were to that hour so familiar. He, as the greatest of prophets, adopts the significant and impressive method, not unfrequently employed by the Seers of Israel, who, in uttering startling and solemn truths, did so by means of symbolic actions. As Jeremiah of old dashed the potter’s vessel down the Valley of Hinnom, to indicate the judgments that were about to befall Jerusalem; or, at another time, wore around his own neck a wooden yoke, to intimate their approaching bondage under the King of Babylon; or, as Isaiah “walked naked and barefoot three years for a sign and wonder upon Egypt and Ethiopia,” so did our Lord now invest a tree in dumb nature with a prophet’s warning voice, and make its stripped and blighted boughs eloquent of a nation’s doom!

On the height of their own Olivet, looking down, as it were, on Jerusalem, that fig-tree becomes a stern messenger of woe and vengeance to the whole house of Judah. Often before had he warned by His words and tears; now He is to make an insignificant object in the outer world take up His prophecy, and testify to the degenerate people at once the cause, the suddenness, and the certainty of their destruction! Let us join, then, the Master and His disciples, as they stand on the crest above Bethany, and, gazing on that fruitless leaf-bearer, “hear this parable of the fig-tree.”[31]

Jesus, on approaching it (it seemed to be at a little distance from their path), and finding abundance of leaves, but no fruit thereon, condemns it to perpetual sterility and barrenness.

A difficulty here occurs on the threshold of the narrative. If, as we have noted, and as St Mark tells us, “the time of figs was not yet”—why this seeming impatience—why this harsh sentence for not having what, if found, would have been unseasonable, untimely, abnormal?