Under the Fig Tree
43 On the next day, he was determined to go out into Galilee, and he found Philip. Jesus said to him, “Follow me.” 44 Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. 45 Philip found Nathanael, and said to him, “We have found him of whom Moses in the law and also the prophets, wrote: Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” 46 Nathanael said to him, “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.” 47 Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him, and said about him, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no deceit!” 48 Nathanael said to him, “How do you know me?” Jesus answered him, “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.” 49 Nathanael answered him, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are King of Israel!” 50 Jesus answered him, “Because I told you, ‘I saw you underneath the fig tree,’ do you believe? You will see greater things than these!” 51 He said to him, “Most certainly, I tell you all, hereafter you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”
A man with a sharp tongue about Nazareth is met with something that undoes him in one sentence.
On the next day, he was determined to go out into Galilee, and he found Philip. Jesus said to him, “Follow me.”
The chain so far has run through people — John points, Andrew fetches Simon — and here it changes. Philip is found rather than brought, and the word is the plain imperative that begins discipleship in every Gospel.
Philip found Nathanael, and said to him, “We have found him of whom Moses in the law and also the prophets, wrote: Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.”
Philip's summary is exactly right and exactly wrong at once, which makes it very lifelike. The claim about Moses and the prophets is the claim this whole book makes John 5:46. The address — Nazareth, Joseph's son — is what everybody assumed and what the prologue has already corrected.
"Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" John 1:46. Nazareth was a village of no consequence a few miles from Nathanael's own.
Nathanael's line is a piece of provincial snobbery from a man who lived a few miles away, in Cana. It is also, on the evidence available to him, a reasonable objection: no prophecy points there, and the village was small and unremarkable.
Philip said to him, "Come and see." He does not argue. The objection is met with the same two words used on Philip's own recruiters four verses earlier, and this is the book's consistent answer to the question of how anyone gets past a reasonable prejudice.
Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him, and said about him, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no deceit!”
The greeting is a compliment with a barb in it that only a man who knew his Scriptures would feel. No deceit is the point: Israel was the name given to Jacob, and Jacob was the great deceiver of the older narrative, who got the blessing by fraud Genesis 27:35. Here is an Israelite without the Jacob in him.
"How do you know me?" The question is defensive and fair. He has just insulted the man's home town within earshot.
Nathanael said to him, “How do you know me?” Jesus answered him, “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.”
The account does not say what he was doing under the fig tree, and the reticence is almost certainly deliberate. Whatever it was, it was private, and the effect on Nathanael is instantaneous and total.
"Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are King of Israel!" John 1:49. From can any good thing to two of the highest titles available, in the space of three verses. What produced it was not an argument about Nazareth. It was being known.
Jesus answered him, “Because I told you, ‘I saw you underneath the fig tree,’ do you believe? You will see greater things than these!”
The confession is accepted and immediately treated as a starting point rather than a finish.
He said to him, “Most certainly, I tell you all, hereafter you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”
And the promise returns to Jacob, who dreamed of a ladder set on the earth with its top in heaven and angels going up and down it Genesis 28:12. The point of that dream was the traffic — a place where earth and heaven were connected. What is said here is that the ladder is a person.
It is the last word of the chapter and it is addressed to you all, plural, past Nathanael to everyone reading.
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