180.  On the following day Jesus furnished to his disciples a parable in action illustrating the fate awaiting the nation; for it is only as a parable that the curse of the barren fig-tree can be understood.  The idea that Jesus showed resentment at disappointment of his hunger when he found no figs on the tree out of season is too petty for consideration.  He was drawn to it by the early foliage, for it was not yet the season for either fruit or leaves.  One is tempted to believe, as Dr. Bruce has suggested, that he had small expectation of finding fruit, and that even before he reached the tree with its early leaves he felt a likeness between it and the nation of hypocrites whose fate was so clear in his mind.  The withering of the fig-tree set his disciples thinking; and Jesus showed that it was an object lesson, promising that the disciples, by the exercise of but a little faith, could do more, even remove mountains,—­such mountains of difficulty as the opposition of the whole Jewish nation would offer to the success of their work in their Master’s name.

181.  The curse upon the barren fig-tree was spoken as Jesus was going from Bethany to Jerusalem on the morning after his Messianic entry, that is, on Monday, and it was Tuesday when the disciples found it withered away (Mark xi. 12-14, 20-25).  On Monday Jesus entered into the temple and taught and healed (Luke xix. 47; Matt. xxi. 14-16).  It is at this point that Mark inserts the cleansing of the temple which John shows to belong rather to Jesus’ first public visit to Jerusalem.  The place which this incident holds in the first three gospels has already been explained by the fact that it furnished one cause for the official hostility to Jesus, and that Mark’s story included no earlier visit to the holy city (sect. 116; see A 39).

182.  Tuesday, the last day of public activity, exhibits Jesus in four different lights, according as he had to do with his critics, with the devout widow, with the inquiring Greeks, and with his own disciples.  The opposition to him expressed itself, after the general challenge of his authority, in three questions put in succession by Pharisees and Herodians, by Sadducees, and by a scribe, more earnest than most, whom the Pharisees put forward after they had seen how Jesus silenced the Sadducees.  Jesus met the opening challenge by a question about John’s baptism (Mark xi. 29-33) which completely destroyed the complacency of his critics, putting them on the defensive.  This was more than a clever stroke, they could not know what his authority was unless they had a quick sense for spiritual things.  His question would have served to bring this to the surface if they had possessed it.  Their reply showed them incapable of receiving a real answer to their question.  It also gave him opportunity to say in three significant parables (Matt. xxi. 28 to xxii. 14) what their spiritual blindness signified for them and their nation, giving thus a turn to the interview not at all to their minds.