Jesus Hungered, or How to Wither a Fig Tree

Riddle me this: What does Jesus — the supposedly all-knowing, all-powerful God incarnate — do when he gets hungry and happens upon an out-of-season fig tree? He cursed it, causing it to wither that no one may ever eat from it. (See Matthew 21:18–22.)

That’s certainly a curious response from a man who, allegedly, went weeks without eating, declaring that living by God’s words is more important than food. (See Matthew 4:4.)

3 thoughts on “Jesus Hungered, or How to Wither a Fig Tree”

  1. like I said before you are an atheist trying to quote scripture so are you atheist or not you are not making any sense you are atheist but you want to quote any ancient religious scripture it makes no sense

    1. Atheists cannot quote the Bible?

      That’s like saying foreigners can’t cite the United States Constitution…

      The Bible is a book like any other. Anyone may read it and critique it, and i absolutely encourage such criticism to continue until folks are no longer willing to die or kill for what the Bible says.

  2. Hello good Sir,
    I’m writing to you in response to the Fig tree in which Jesus intentionally withers. At face value this does look rather petulant and mean. Lets examine this situation a bit, however, before we make Jesus out to be uncaring.
    “Middle Easter fig trees bore 2 kinds of fruit. As the leaves were starting to come in the spring, before the figs came, the branches bore little nodules, which were abundant and very good to eat. Travelers liked to pick them off and eat them as they made their journey. If you found a fig tree that had begun to sprout leaves but had none of these delicious nodules, you would know that something was wrong. It might look okay from a distance because the leaves had emerged, but if it had no nodules it was diseased or maybe even dying inside. Growth without fruit was a sign of decay. Jesus is simply pronouncing that such is the case here. Remember that this happens between his first arrival at the temple and his return to the temple the next day. Jesus seizes the opportunity to provide a private, memorable object lesson, a parable against hollow religiosity, with the fig tree as a visual a
    so what is the lesson about? Jesus finds the fig tree not doing its appointed job. The tree became a perfect metaphor for Israel, and beyond that, for those claiming to be God’s people but do not bear fruit for him. Jesus was returning to a place that was religiously very busy, just like most Churches are: tasks, commitments, noise, people coming and going, lots of transactions. But the business contained no spirituality.”
    -Tim Keller (Kings Cross)

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