This incident is the first part of another of Mark's interrupted stories (cf. 3:20-35; 5:21-43; 6:7-31). Its structure provides the key to its interpretation. First, Jesus cursed the fig tree. Then He cleansed the temple. Finally He came back to the fig tree with a lesson for the disciples. There is unity of subject matter in the whole section. The chiastic arrangement highlights the central element as being most revealing.
Mark gave more precise time intervals than Matthew did. Matthew related the cursing of the fig tree (Matt. 21:12-17) and Jesus' lesson to the disciples the following day (Matt. 21:18-22) back to back.
11:12-13 The next day was Tuesday. The incident occurred as Jesus and His disciples walked from Bethany to Jerusalem on Tuesday morning (Matt. 21:18). Mark explained that it was not the season for figs, for his non-Palestinian readers. Matthew did not add this explanation. It was late March.274The leaves on this tree suggested that it was bearing fruit, but it was not.
"Though ripe figs were not expected until June, smaller pre-figs' would appear with the leaves in March or April. Jesus was looking for those indicators that genuine fruit would one day result."275
11:14 Jesus saw an opportunity to teach His disciples an important truth using this tree as an object lesson. He cursed the tree to teach them the lesson, not because it failed to produce fruit. The tree was a good illustration of the large unbelieving element within the nation of Israel. God had looked to that generation of Israelites for spiritual fruit, as Jesus had hoped to find physical fruit on the fig tree (cf. Jer. 8:13; Hos. 9:10; Mic. 7:1; Nah. 3:12; Zech. 10:2). Israel's outward display of religious vitality was impressive, like the leaves on the tree, but it bore no spiritual fruit of righteousness. It was hypocritical (7:6; 11:15-19, 27-12:40).
"Jesus was on the eve of spiritual conflict with a nation whose prime and patent fault was hypocrisy or false pretense, and here he finds a tree guilty of the same thing. It gives him his opportunity, without hurting anybody, to sit in judgment on the fault."276
"In Mark's story world, hypocrisy exists where there is a discrepancy between appearance and underlying truth."277
This is the only destructive miracle that the Gospel writers attributed to Jesus.
This was Jesus' second messianic act that constituted part of His formal presentation to Israel. The first was the Triumphal Entry (vv. 1-11).
11:15-16 The market atmosphere existed in the court of the Gentiles, the outermost courtyard within the temple enclosure (Gr. hieron, cf. v. 17). Jesus' literal house cleaning represented His authority as Messiah to clean up the corrupt nation of Israel. Verse 16, unique in Mark, shows the extent to which Jesus went in purifying the temple. By doing this, Jesus was acting as a faithful servant of the Lord.
11:17 The Isaiah prophecy was a prediction yet unfulfilled as well as a statement of God's perennial intent for the temple. In Jesus' mouth it was also a prophecy of conditions in the messianic kingdom.
Mark added "for all the nations,"which Matthew omitted from Isaiah 56:7. The phrase has special significance for Gentile readers. God permitted Gentiles to come and worship Him in the temple court of the Gentiles indicating His desire to bring them into relationship with Himself.
The Jewish leaders, however, had made this practically impossible by converting the only place Gentiles could pray in the temple complex into a market where fraud abounded. They had expelled the Gentile worshippers to make room for Jewish robbers.
Jesus was claiming that the temple belonged to Him rather than to the Jewish leaders by cleaning it up. The quotation He cited from Isaiah presented the temple as God's house. Thus Jesus was claiming to be God.
"The third stage in the progressive disclosure of Jesus' itentity [to the reader] focuses on the secret that he is the Son of God [11:12-15:39]."278
11:18-19 Jesus' action and words had threatened the reputation and resources of the Sanhedrin members. They plotted to kill Him (cf. 3:6). The intensity of their hatred becomes clear later (11:27-12:37). Mark alone recorded that they feared Jesus. The reason was the impact His teaching was having on the multitudes that gathered from all over the ancient world for Passover (cf. 1:22; 6:2; 7:37; 10:26).
At evening Jesus and the disciples again left Jerusalem and spent the night on Mt. Olivet (Luke 21:37), probably in Bethany (v. 11).
This is the third part of the incident centering on the cleansing of the temple (cf. vv. 12-14).
11:20-21 This event happened on Wednesday morning. "Withered from the roots"means that death was spreading through the tree beginning from its sources of nourishment. The roots of the tree correspond to the religious leaders of the nation. Death would pass from them to that whole generation of unbelieving Jews. Peter connected the judgment with Jesus' words. Likewise Jesus' word of judgment on that generation of Jews would have a similar effect.
11:22-23 Rather than explaining the symbolic significance of the cursing of the fig tree Jesus proceeded to focus on the means by which the miracle happened. This was an important discipleship lesson that Jesus had taught before (cf. Matt. 6:13-14; 7:7; 17:20; 18:19; Luke 11:9; 17:6), but it appears only here in Mark. The point was that dependent trust in God can accomplish humanly impossible things through prayer (cf. James 1:6).
God is the source of the power to change. Moving a mountain is a universal symbol of doing something that appears to be impossible (cf. Zech. 4:7). Jesus presupposed that overcoming the difficulty in view was God's will. A true disciple of Jesus would hardly pray for anything else (Matt. 6:10). The person praying can therefore believe that what he requests will happen because it is God's will. He will neither doubt God's ability to do what he requests, since God can do anything, nor will he doubt that God will grant his petition, since it is God's will.
Why did Mark not explain what Jesus assumed, namely that disciples would pray for God's will to happen? Evidently when he wrote, his original readers were committed Christians. The Roman empire then weeded out simply professing Christians much more than is true today, at least in the West. The idea that a Christian would want anything but the will of God to happen was absurd in a world where identifying oneself as a Christian meant severe persecution and possibly death.
11:24 Asking is a particular form of praying. Disciples can believe we have what we request in prayer when we ask for God's will to take place (Matt. 6:10; 7:7) because God will accomplish His will.
11:25 Faith in God is not the only condition for answered prayer. One must also forgive his or her fellow human beings. The Jews commonly stood when they prayed (cf. 1 Sam. 1:26; Luke 18:11, 13). Forgiving our brothers and sisters is a precondition for obtaining family forgiveness from the Father (Matt. 6:14-15). This is the only place in Mark where Jesus referred to the disciples' Father in heaven. This may have reminded them of His teaching in the Lord's prayer (Matt. 6:9-15).
11:26 This verse does not appear in the most important ancient manuscripts of Mark's Gospel. Evidently scribes inserted it later because they associated the preceding verse with Matthew 6:14.
