Fig tree

The fig (Ficus carica) is one of the first trees named in scripture and one of the few that bears two crops in a single year — an early "first-ripe" fruit in late spring and a heavier main crop in late summer. It thrives in the dry, rocky terraces of the Judean and Galilean hills, sending deep roots after winter moisture and spreading low, gnarled branches that throw a wide pool of shade. The leaves are large, lobed, and slightly rough — the leaves Adam and Eve sewed together in Genesis 3. Householders planted a fig at the corner of a courtyard or alongside a vine; together the two became shorthand for peaceful, settled life under one's own roof. Jesus draws on every part of the tree. He looks for fruit on a leafy fig and finds none (Mar.11), curses it, and turns the moment into a parable of fruitless religion. He tells of a vinedresser pleading for one more year to dig and dung an unfruitful fig (Luk.13). He uses the bursting of fig leaves as a sign that summer is near (Mat.24). And in Joh.1, Nathanael is found "under the fig tree" — the rabbis' traditional spot for study and prayer.