The Parable of the Barren Fig Tree

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Jesus tells this parable immediately after news reaches Him of two disasters, Galileans killed by Pilate and eighteen men killed when a tower in Siloam fell on them. Those who brought the report seem to have expected Him to treat the victims as unusually guilty. Twice He answers the same way: "I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish."¹ The parable that follows carries that warning forward under a different picture, one of patience that has already run for some time and cannot run forever.

"He spake also this parable; A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came and sought fruit thereon, and found none. Then said he unto the dresser of his vineyard, Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and find none: cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground? And he answering said unto him, Lord, let it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it, and dung it: and if it bear fruit, well: and if not, then after that thou shalt cut it down."²

A Tree Planted Where It Could Not Claim Neglect

The tree in this parable stands in a vineyard, a place of deliberate cultivation, not in the wild where its condition could be explained by poor soil or a lack of care. Fig trees were valued highly in that country for their fruit and their shade, and it was a common practice to plant a fig tree or an olive tree inside a vineyard to make full use of the ground. A fig tree normally began to bear within three years of planting. This tree has already had that much time and more, and the man's search is not the first search. He comes and seeks fruit, and the text records total failure rather than a disappointing yield: he found none.

Three Years, and a Verdict of Cut It Down

"Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and find none: cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground?" Three years of coming to look is not haste. It is patience already extended past the point where the tree's own nature said it should have produced. The owner's word to the dresser is not the first word he might have spoken; it comes only after the pattern has repeated itself three times over. His question, why should the tree use up the ground, reflects the plain economics of a small plot of cultivated land. A tree that draws water and nourishment from the soil without giving anything back is not neutral. It stands in the place a fruitful tree or vine could otherwise occupy.

The verdict, cut it down, is not vindictive. It follows directly from what a fig tree is for. A tree exists in an orchard to bear fruit, and a tree that consistently does not is failing at the one purpose that justified giving it that ground in the first place. The owner has already waited through the years such a tree ordinarily needs to begin bearing, and the case against it, on the evidence available to him, is closed.

Let It Alone This Year Also

"And he answering said unto him, Lord, let it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it, and dung it." The dresser does not dispute the owner's assessment of the tree's failure. He does not claim the tree has secretly been fruitful, and he offers no excuse on the tree's behalf. What he asks for is time, one further year, joined to a specific plan of additional care. Digging around the roots loosened compacted soil and let air and water reach them more freely, and adding dung fed the tree with nutrients the depleted ground could no longer supply on its own. This was not a request to leave the tree alone in the sense of neglecting it further. It was a request to give the tree every remaining advantage before the sentence already pronounced is carried out.

"And if it bear fruit, well: and if not, then after that thou shalt cut it down." The dresser's request does not overturn the owner's judgment. It delays the execution of that judgment by one year and attaches genuine effort to the delay, and it states plainly that the delay is not indefinite. If the added care produces nothing, the sentence stands exactly as it was first given. The mercy shown here is real, and its limit is stated in the same breath as the mercy itself.

The Fig Tree Elsewhere in Scripture

Jesus did not invent the fig tree as a figure for a people who ought to bear fruit and do not. The prophets had already used it that way. Hosea recalls a time when the nation was as welcome to God as an early harvest: "I found Israel like grapes in the wilderness; I saw your fathers as the firstripe in the fig tree at her first time."⁷ Jeremiah pronounces judgment in the same figure, reversed: "there shall be no grapes on the vine, nor figs on the fig tree, and the leaf shall fade; and the things that I have given them shall pass away from them."⁸ A parable using a barren fig tree, told to a crowd that had grown up on those same prophets, was not introducing a new image. It was placing a familiar warning in a new setting, with the same patience and the same limit attached to it.

Patience That Is Not Endless

Paul asks a question of anyone tempted to read patience as acquittal: "Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?"³ The goodness that delays judgment is not evidence that judgment was never deserved. It is time granted for the very thing the tree in the parable has not yet done. Peter states the same purpose behind the same delay: "The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance."⁴ The waiting has a reason, and the reason is not that the danger has passed.

John the Baptist had already given the warning its sharpest form before Jesus ever told this parable: "And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire."⁵ The axe is not a distant threat introduced for the first time here. It was already laid at the root, waiting, while the dresser's request for one more year runs its course. Jesus describes the same principle at work in the vine and its branches: "Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit."⁶ Fruitlessness and fruitfulness both meet a response from the one who tends the vine, and neither is left where it stands.

The Year Granted and the Generation That Received It

Applied to the nation, the single year the vinedresser asked for pictures one further generation granted to Israel. The three years already spent are the years in which the nation, confronted with Christ, did not bring forth the fruit He came seeking; His rejection was the fruitlessness the owner found. The year the vinedresser then obtained was not an indefinite reprieve. It was a fixed span, matched in the parable's own terms, and given for the stated purpose of producing what the three years had not produced. Carried into history, that granted year fell to the generation that followed Christ's ministry, the generation of the apostles and of Paul. To that generation was given every advantage the vinedresser's care pictures, the preaching of the apostles, the witness of the resurrection, the ministry of Paul among Jew and Gentile alike, and from that generation the fruit of repentance and faith was still owed. It was not brought forth. The axe that John the Baptist had already described as laid at the root of the trees fell in that generation's own lifetime: Jerusalem and the temple were destroyed in AD 70. The sentence pronounced on the fig tree, and delayed by one year at the dresser's plea, was carried out on the nation exactly as the parable had already said it would be, after the year that had been granted came to its end without fruit.

What the Parable Leaves Open

The parable itself ends before the fourth year arrives; the outcome of the digging and the dung is not narrated inside the story Jesus told. What is told is the shape of the mercy itself: real care, added at real cost, granted for a fixed time and for the stated purpose of producing what three years had not produced. The warning that opened the chapter, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish, stands behind the whole parable without needing to be repeated at its close. The tree was given a further season because a further season could still yield fruit. That is the entire ground of the delay, and it is also the reason the delay could not be assumed to continue without limit, a limit history itself recorded when the year granted to the nation closed in AD 70.

Luke 13:3, KJV. ↩
Luke 13:6-9, KJV. ↩
Romans 2:4, KJV. ↩
2 Peter 3:9, KJV. ↩
Matthew 3:10, KJV. ↩
John 15:2, KJV. ↩
Hosea 9:10, KJV. ↩
Jeremiah 8:13, KJV. ↩