Fig Tree

The fig was one of the most important fruit trees of the land — sweet, nourishing, easily dried and stored. Its broad leaves were the very first covering Adam and Eve made for themselves in Eden.

To sit “under his vine and under his fig tree” was the Bible's picture of settled peace and prosperity, a phrase repeated to describe the good days of Solomon and the hoped-for days of the Messiah. Because of this, the fig tree often stood for Israel herself, and its fruitfulness or barrenness for the nation's spiritual condition.

Jesus drew on both ideas: he cursed a leafy but fruitless fig tree as a warning against the appearance of life without its reality, and he made the fig's budding leaves a sign to “know that summer is nigh.” The fig teaches that God looks for real fruit, not just foliage — and that the seasons of his plan can be read by those who watch.