Book 4, lines 389-398

[Previous: lines 349-388]

John is narrating various miracles.

“Accipe nunc aliud quod paucis antè diebus
vidimus: arbor erat foliis densissima in agro                     [390]
deserto, unde olim pendentia poma viator
carpebat sitiens: heros, qui hac forte tenebat
pulverulentus iter, quœsivit in arbore fœtus
incassùm; infœcunda comas nam et brachia tantùm
luxurians latè circum tendebat opaca.                             [395]
Non tulit; ac verbis sterilem execratus acerbis:
continuô (manifesta audis) exaruit arbos,
et folia aereas volitârunt lapsa per auras.”

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“Now let me tell you: a few days ago
I saw a tree thick with leaves in the desert.                       [390]
Formerly its dangling fruit would refresh
the thirsty traveller; but when the hero
on a dusty journey stopped to pluck its buds—
nothing! only barren foliage spread out
and black branches coiling all around.                         [395]
This could not stand. His words sterilised the tree.
This curse (you’re hearing the truth) shrivelled it up
and its dry leaves fell and drifted through the air.”

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The episode of Jesus cursing the fig tree has always baffled me, rather. Why? Poor old tree, struggling to grow in a barren landscape and then: bam. Cursed. John's ‘a few days ago’ reflects that the incident, as reported in the Gospels, happens as Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem for his last days.

Now the next day, when they had come out from Bethany, He was hungry. And seeing from afar a fig tree having leaves, He went to see if perhaps He would find something on it. When He came to it, He found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. In response Jesus said to it, “Let no one eat fruit from you ever again.” And His disciples heard it. [Mark, 11:12–14]

Mark's next verse is ‘and so they came to Jerusalem’; and after an account of Jesus driving the money-lenders from the temple Mark's account reverts to the tree:

Now in the morning, as they passed by, they saw the fig tree dried up from the roots. And Peter, remembering, said to Him, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree which You cursed has withered away.”

So Jesus answered and said to them, “Have faith in God. For assuredly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be removed and be cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says. Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them. [Mark 11: 20-24]

Scholars describe this as an ‘intercalated narrative’; Mark using the cursing of the tree to provide an implicit commentary on his story of the cleansing of the Jewish temple. Like the tree (we intuit) the temple is barren and will wither because, like the fig tree, it has failed to produce the fruit of righteousness for the Son of God. Matthew, 21:18–22 compresses Mark's divided account into a single story in which the fig tree withers-away as soon as the curse is pronounced, putting the miracle behind him as he moves the narrative onward to Jesus' driving the moneylenders from the temple. Luke doesn't narrate this incident at all, but instead includes a parable (scholars suggest this also derives, though in a different way, from whatever body of tradition lies behind Mark and Matthew):

A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. Then he said to the keeper of his vineyard, ‘Look, for three years I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree and find none. Cut it down; why does it use up the ground?’ But he answered and said to him, ‘Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and fertilize it. And if it bears fruit, well. But if not, after that you can cut it down.’ [Luke 13:6–9]

Jesus and his followers are on their way to Jerusalem for Passover. That means it's springtime. Figs don't ripen so early in the year, though. So what's going on here? Charles W F Smith quotes that thundering Victorian Archbishop Tench, as well as more recent theologians:

“We must first ask ourselves here,” [says Tench] “how should our Lord, knowing, as by his divine power he must, that there was no fruit upon that tree, have gone to seek it there...? Was this consistent with a perfect sincerity and truth?” “It is again perplexing, that he should have treated the tree as a moral agent, punishing it.... This, in itself perplexing, becomes infinitely more so through a notice of St. Mark's; which indeed the order of the natural year would of itself have suggested, namely, that ‘the time of figs was not yet’.” Tench adds, “For the symbol must needs be carried through... we must be consistent and show that it might have had such, that there was a justifying reason why it should have had none.” Among recent commentators the situation is forcibly expressed by Bundy when he says, “Apart from its sheer physical impossibility and evident absurdity... the act depicted is irrational and revolting: Jesus curses a fig tree for not bearing fruit out of season.” [Charles W F Smith, ‘No Time for Figs’, Journal of Biblical Literature 79:4 (1960), 315]

Smith tries to untange the puzzle by arguing that the season was actually autumn, when figs are in season, suggesting that Jesus was going to Jerusalem not for Passover but for the Festival of the Tabernacle (although the Gospels do say Passover); and Mark's ‘it was not the time for figs’ is a later gloss. This, though, raises puzzles of its own. I'm more with Tench here, I must say. All very odd.

The Greek of the NT specifies that the fruit of the tree was the σύκο, or fig; the Vulgate likewise has ficus, fig. For some reason, though I don't know why (hard to fit fīcōrum into the metre, but fīcōs goes easily enough) Vida doesn't like this word; so he goes with pōmum (line 391). It's the word gives us our modern pommes, apples, but in Latin it can apply to any kind of fruit.

[Next: lines 399-438]