Mark 11:1-14

The Cursing of the Fig-Tree. Though it is difficult to believe that Jesus spent only one crowded week in Jerusalem, Mk. here becomes confidently precise in chronology, and he tells the story of the fig-tree, distinguishing the stages in it, as if he were following exact recollections. On the first evening, Jesus surveyed the Temple, not as if He had never seen it before, but to determine His course of action. After looking round, He withdrew to Bethany. The next day occurred the incident of the fig-tree a difficult story, absent from Lk. One is tempted to suppose either that the parable of the barren fig-tree (Luke 13:6 *) has been transformed into incident, or, as HNT suggests, that the story grew round some conspicuous dead tree in the vicinity of Jerusalem. As Mk. relates it, it does not read even as an acted parable, symbolic of judgment on the fruitlessness of Judaism.