Luke 13:8,9 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

And he said, Let it alone this year also Here we have the vine-dresser's intercession for the barren fig-tree. Thus Christ the great Intercessor interceded for the Jewish Church and people, and thus, as he ever liveth, he continues to intercede for all unfruitful professors, and other sinners. And all faithful ministers of the gospel are intercessors for their flocks. They that dress the vineyard intercede for it, and pray for those to whom they preach. Observe, reader, the vine-dresser does not pray that the barren tree might never be cut down, but that it might not be cut down immediately; that a little further space might be granted to try whether it would bear fruit. Till I shall dig about it, &c. Here the vine-dresser promises to improve this reprieve, if it be granted, for our prayers must always be seconded by our endeavours. When we request God's grace, it must be with an humble resolution to do our duty, otherwise we mock God, and show that we do not rightly value the mercy we pray for. He engages to dig about the tree and dung it: for unfruitful Christians must be awakened by the terrors of the law, which, as it were, break up the ground, and then encouraged by the promises of the gospel, which may be compared to the application of warming and fattening manure to a tree: both methods must be tried, the one preparing for the other, and both are found by experience to be scarce sufficient. If it bear fruit, well There being evidently an ellipsis in the original here, (for there is nothing answering to the word well,) Mr. Wesley and Dr. Campbell render the verse, Perhaps it will bear fruit; but if not, thou mayest afterward cut it down Though God bear long, he will not bear always with unfruitful professors: his patience, if abused, will have an end, and will give way to that wrath which will have no end. And the longer he hath waited, and the more cost, so to speak, he has been at with sinners, the greater will be their destruction when it comes. And those who now intercede for them, and take pains with them, if they persist in their unfruitfulness, will be even content to see them cut down, and will have no more to plead in their behalf. Their best friends will acquiesce in, nay, will approve of, and applaud the righteous judgment of God, in the day of the manifestation of it; Revelation 15:3-4. Thus, in this parable, primarily intended, as we have observed, to be applied to the Jews, our Lord represented to that people God's displeasure against them for having neglected to improve, or, to speak more properly, for having abused the many advantages and opportunities vouchsafed to them, as planted in the vineyard of his church; and in an awful manner intimated, that though they had hitherto, at his intercession, been spared, and a further time of trial afforded them; yet, if they continued unfruitful under the additional cultivation they were shortly to receive, on the descent of the Holy Spirit, and the proposal of the gospel, in its full extent and evidence; that is, under the last and best means with which they should yet be favoured, no more pains would be taken with them, nor had they any thing to expect but speedy, irresistible, and irrecoverable ruin.