The Fig Tree Withered
18 Now in the morning, as he returned to the city, he was hungry. 19 Seeing a fig tree by the road, he came to it and found nothing on it but leaves. He said to it, “Let there be no fruit from you forever!” Immediately the fig tree withered away. 20 When the disciples saw it, they marveled, saying, “How did the fig tree immediately wither away?” 21 Jesus answered them, “Most certainly I tell you, if you have faith and don’t doubt, you will not only do what was done to the fig tree, but even if you told this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ it would be done. 22 All things, whatever you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive.”
The only destructive miracle in the Gospels, worked on a tree in full leaf that had nothing on it.
18 Now in the morning, as he returned to the city, he was hungry. 19 Seeing a fig tree by the road, he came to it and found nothing on it but leaves. He said to it, “Let there be no fruit from you forever!” Immediately the fig tree withered away.
The incident is in the earlier account Mark 11:20–33, and it is the one miracle in the Gospels that destroys something. Read as a lost temper over breakfast it makes no sense, which is a sign it is not being read as what it is.
The tree's offense is in the words nothing on it but leaves. A fig in that country puts out early fruit with its leaves; a tree in full leaf is advertising a crop. This one had the entire appearance of fruitfulness and nothing underneath it, and the judgment lands on the discrepancy rather than on the barrenness.
What it is aimed at is obvious from where it stands. He has just walked out of a temple in full ceremonial leaf — sacrifices, courses of priests, festival crowds — and found the fruit missing, and this is the morning after. The prophets had used the fig for Israel repeatedly Jeremiah 8:13 Hosea 9:10, and the acted parable says in a sentence what the parable of the tenants will say in fourteen verses.
When the disciples saw it, they marveled, saying, “How did the fig tree immediately wither away?”
The disciples are impressed by the mechanism and miss the meaning, and the answer he gives runs with their question rather than correcting it.
Jesus answered them, “Most certainly I tell you, if you have faith and don’t doubt, you will not only do what was done to the fig tree, but even if you told this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ it would be done.
They are standing on a ridge looking at a mountain and, further off, the sea.
All things, whatever you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive.”
The promise is as wide as it sounds and it is not a blank check for anything a person can want badly enough. What has just been demonstrated is a judgment enacted on God's own errand, and the praying in view is the kind that asks for what God is already doing — the mountain moved is not the one you happen to dislike.
settled What this mark means