Note 349 — Chapter IX · MIRACLES OF JESUS.

Thus the evil condition of the tree was not habitual but temporary; still further, if we follow Mark, it was not even objective, or existing intrinsically in the tree, but purely subjective, that is, a result of the accidental relation of the tree to the momentary wish and want of Jesus. For according to an addition which forms the second feature peculiar to Mark in this narrative, it was not then the time of figs (v. 13); it was not therefore a defect, but, on the contrary, quite in due order, that this tree, as well as others, had no figs on it, and Jesus (in whom it is already enough to excite surprise that he expected to find figs on the tree so out of season) might at least have reflected, when he found none, on the groundlessness of his expectation, and have forborne so wholly unjust an act as the cursing of the tree. Even some of the fathers stumbled at this addition of Mark’s and felt that it rendered the conduct of Jesus enigmatical;349 and to descend to later times, Woolston’s ridicule is not unfounded, when he says that if a Kentish countryman were to seek for fruit in his garden in spring, and were to cut down the trees which had none, he would be a common laughing-stock. Expositors have attempted to free themselves from the difficulty which this addition introduces, by a motley series of conjectures and interpretations. On the one hand, the wish that the perplexing words did not stand in the text, has been turned into the hypothesis that they may probably be a subsequent gloss.350 On the other hand, as, if an addition of this kind must stand there, the contrary statement, namely, that it was then the time of figs, were rather to be desired, in order to render intelligible the expectation of Jesus, and his displeasure when he found it deceived; it has been attempted in various ways to remove the negative out of the proposition. One expedient is altogether violent, οὗ being read instead of οὐ, a point inserted after ἦν, and a second ἦν supplied after σύκων, so that the translation runs thus: ubi enim tum versabatur (Jesus), tempus ficuum erat;351 another expedient, the transformation of the sentence into an interrogatory one, nonne enim, etc., is absurd.352 A third expedient is to understand the words καιρὸς σύκων as implying the time of the fig-gathering, and thus to take Mark’s addition as a statement that the figs were not yet gathered, i.e. were still on the trees,353 in support of which interpretation, appeal is made to the phrase καιρὸς τῶν καρπῶν (Matt. xxi. 34). But this expression strictly refers only to the antecedent of the harvest, the existence of the fruits in the fields or on the trees; when it stands in an affirmative proposition, it can only be understood as referring to the consequent, namely, the possible gathering of the fruit, in so far as it also includes the antecedent, the existence of the fruits in the field: hence ἔστι καιρὸς καρπῶν can only mean thus much: the (ripe) fruits stand in the fields, and are therefore ready to be gathered. In like manner, when the above expression stands in a negative proposition, the antecedent, the existence of the fruits in the field, on the trees, etc., is primarily denied, that of the consequent only secondarily and by implication; thus οὐκ ἔστι καιρὸς σύκων, means: the figs are not on the trees, and therefore not ready to be gathered; by no means the reverse: they are not yet gathered, and therefore are still on the trees. But this unexampled figure of speech, by which, while according to the words the antecedent is denied, according to the sense only the consequent is denied, and the antecedent affirmed, is not all which the above explanation entails upon us; it also requires the admission of another figure which is sometimes called synchisis, sometimes hyperbaton. For, as a statement that the figs were then still on the trees, the addition in question does not show the reason why Jesus found none on that tree, but why he expected the contrary; it ought therefore, say the advocates of this explanation, to stand, not after he found nothing but leaves, but after he came, if haply he might find any thing thereon; a transposition, however, which only proves that this whole explanation runs counter to the text. Convinced, on the one hand, that the addition of Mark denies the prevalence of circumstances favourable to the existence of figs on that tree, but, on the other hand, still labouring to justify the expectation of Jesus, other expositors have sought to give to that negation, instead of the general sense, that it was not the right season of the year for figs, a fact of which Jesus must unavoidably have been aware, the particular sense, that special circumstances only not necessarily known to Jesus, hindered the fruitfulness of the tree. It would have been a hindrance altogether special, if the soil in which the tree was rooted had been an unfruitful one; hence, according to some, the words καιρὸς σύκων actually signify a soil favourable to figs.354 Others with more regard to the verbal meaning of καιρὸς, adhere it is true to the interpretation of it as favourable time, but instead of understanding the statement of Mark universally, as referring to a regular, annual season, in which figs were not to be obtained, they maintain it to mean that that particular year was from some incidental causes unfavourable to figs.355 But the immediate signification of καιρὸς is the right, in opposition to the wrong season, not a favourable season as opposed to an unfavourable one. Now, when any one, even in an unproductive year, seeks for fruits at the time in which they are wont to be ripe, it cannot be said that it is the wrong season for fruit; on the contrary, the idea of a bad year might be at once conveyed by the statement, that when the time for fruit came, ὅτε ἦλθεν ὁ καιρὸς τῶν καρπῶν, there was none to be found. In any case, if the whole course of the year were unfavourable to figs, a fruit so abundant in Palestine, Jesus must almost as necessarily have known this as that it was the wrong season; so that the enigma remains, how Jesus could be so indignant that the tree was in a condition which, owing to circumstances known to him, was inevitable.