Why Did Jesus Curse the Fig Tree?
Why did Jesus curse the fig tree? And why did he get so mad at the vendors in the temple that he flipped over their tables and drove them out with a whip?
If you’re like me, you might wonder… those actions seem so uncharacteristic for him.
The video that I link to at the end of this post explains it quite well. Don’t pay attention to the clickbait title; this is actually good stuff. But first, here’s the Bible passage to jog your memory (Mark 11:12–25):
On the following day, when they came from Bethany, he was hungry. And seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see if he could find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. And he said to it, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard it.
And they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons; and he would not allow any one to carry anything through the temple. And he taught, and said to them, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.” And the chief priests and the scribes heard it and sought a way to destroy him; for they feared him, because all the multitude was astonished at his teaching. And when evening came, they went out of the city.
As they passed by in the morning, they saw the fig tree withered away to its roots. And Peter remembered and said to him, “Master, look! The fig tree which you cursed has withered.” And Jesus answered them, “Have faith in God. Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you receive it, and you will. And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against any one; so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.”
What we may not grasp—but what must have been obvious to the disciples—is that the three sections of this sequence are intimately connected: Jesus cursing the fig tree… his angry reaction at the temple… and the observance that the fig tree had withered.
First, let’s talk about Jesus’s outburst at the Temple. Most of us probably think that he turned over the tables of the money changers as a sign that we shouldn’t mix the love of money with the love of God—because, as Jesus says in Matthew 6:24, “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.”
That is definitely one reason. But it seems like there’s another layer of meaning that only those with knowledge of biblical history can understand.
Back in Jesus’s day, the temple area was divided up in different segments: the outer temple area where the faithful prayed, the inner “Holy of Holies” where only priests had access, and a smallish, somewhat removed area where the Gentiles were allowed to come and worship.
Just from the location of that area, it’s clear that the Gentiles were considered to be a lower “caste.” And to make matters worse, the vendors selling animals for sacrifice were encroaching on this already tiny space allotted to them, pushing out the Gentiles altogether.
That’s what made Jesus so mad: that people who sincerely wanted to worship God were kept away from the temple.
The fig tree was supposed to bear nodules at that time of year, which would then grow into figs, but Jesus saw nothing but leaves. The tree, then, says the narrator of the video, symbolizes the nation of Israel—a nation whose entire purpose had been to know, love, and serve God—and the Pharisees, self-indulgent gatekeepers of the faith who believed themselves to be better than everyone else but didn’t bear any fruit.
This makes so much sense: Jesus cursing the fig tree and making it wither means God’s favor would be taken away from the fruitless gatekeepers and transferred to the totality of all the faithful—wherever they’d be found—who would follow after Christ.
When I wanted to gather them, says the Lord,
there are no grapes on the vine,
nor figs on the fig tree;
even the leaves are withered,
and what I gave them has passed away from them.[…]
O that I had in the desert
a traveler’s lodging place,
that I might leave my people
and go away from them!
For they are all adulterers,
a band of traitors.
They bend their tongues like bows;
they have grown strong in the land for falsehood, and not for truth;
for they proceed from evil to evil,
and they do not know me, says the Lord.(Jeremiah 8:13, 9:2-3)
It always stuns me how multi-layered just about every verse in the Bible is.
God bless you!
P.S. If you feel generous, consider upgrading to a paid subscription to support me with a few bucks a month. I’d really appreciate it. If you got this in your inbox, you can simply click the “Upgrade to Paid” button at the bottom of the email. Right now, I’m getting ready to turn Diary of a Stumbling Saint into a book, so the more time I can devote to that, the sooner it’ll be published. My paid subscribers will get an early sneak peek at the book cover and other inner-circle goodies. Thanks in advance!