In the way. — Better, on the road. Fig-trees were often planted by the road-side under the notion that dust suited them.
He came to it. — St. Mark adds, what St. Matthew indeed implies, that He came, if “haply He might find anything thereon.” The fig-tree in Palestine bears two or three crops a year. Josephus, indeed, says that fruit might be found on the trees in Judæa for ten months out of the twelve. Commonly at the beginning of April the trees that still grow out of the rocks between Bethany and Jerusalem are bare both of leaves and fruit, and so probably it was now with all but the single tree which attracted our Lord’s notice. It was in full foliage, and being so far in advance of its fellows it might not unnaturally have been expected to have had, in the first week of April, the “first ripe fruit” (Hosea 9:10), which usually was gathered in May. So, in Song Song of Solomon 2:13, the appearance of the “green figs” coincides with that of the flowers of spring, and the time of the singing of birds. The illustrations from the branches and leaves of the fig-tree in Luke 21:29-30, suggest that the season was a somewhat forward one. On the special difficulty connected with St. Mark’s statement, “the time of figs was not yet,” see Note on Mark 11:13.
Let no fruit grow on thee henceforward for ever. — From the lips of one of like passions with ourselves, the words might seem the utterance of impatient disappointment. Here they assume the character of a solemn judgment passed not so much on the tree as on that of which it became the representative. The Jews, in their show of the “leaves” of outward devotion, in the absence of the “fruits” of righteousness, were as that barren tree. But a few weeks before (Luke 13:6) He had taken the fig-tree to which “a man came seeking fruit and finding none,” as a parable of the state of Israel. Then the sentence, “Cut it down,” had been delayed, as in the hope of a possible amendment. Now, what He saw flashed upon Him in a moment (if we may so speak) as the parable embodied. The disappointment of the expectations which He had formed in His human craving for food was like the disappointment of the owner of the fig-tree in the parable. The sentence which He now passed on the tree, and its immediate fulfilment, were symbols of the sentence and the doom which were about to fall on the unrepentant and unbelieving people.
Presently. — The word is used in its older sense of “immediately.” As with nearly all such words — “anon,” “by and by,” and the like — man’s tendency to delay has lowered its meaning, and it now suggests the thought.