Mark 11:12-25, Matthew 21:18-22 Jesus curses the fig tree.
In Mark, especially, this episode is embedded in the sequence of Jesus' announcements that the Son of Man will die and be resurrected in Jerusalem - and then the smaller sequence of Him entering the city, looking around the temple,to return the next day and drive out the merchants,exclaiming “Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it ‘a den of robbers.”
A question or two comes up: Why did he look for figs out of season? And why did he make it into a lesson about faith? If the fig tree in some way alludes to the existence of the nation as it was then constituted and Jewish religious practice,it would mean that the Owner had the right to look for fruits "even out of season", when the nation thought the time wasn't convenient (Malachi comes to mind, as well as the vineyard Isaiah mentions and Hebrews 6:8). He had the right to let not only a tree, but the whole of the old dispensation dry up to the roots. The disciples needed faith to break with this old system and follow the Lord into the new dispensation.
