The Unproductive Fig Tree

This is a book first posted on Grace Connection, the Magazine. There is no printed edition. All 30 chapters will appear on the Wheel in the following weeks.

CHAPTER 21

Luke 13:6-9

The fig tree is a common fruit tree in Palestine. It is referred to more than sixty times in the Bible. It bore fruit ten months of the year with the early figs emerging in the spring before the leaves appeared. Fruit trees do not ordinarily produce fruit for three years after the young saplings have been put in the ground. Consequently, the three years that figs were expected in the Parable of the Unproductive Fig Tree would be the fourth, fifth, and sixth year after the tree was planted.

The fig tree in this story had produced no fruit for three years. A fig tree is planted not for shade or ornament or for any other purpose other than to bear fruit. So when the owner saw no fruit on it for three successive seasons, he said to the gardener, "See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?"

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