Luke 21:29
Then Jesus told them a parable: “Look at the fig tree and all the trees.
BSB
ASV
And he spake to them a parable: Behold the fig tree, and all the trees:
KJV
And he spake to them a parable; Behold the fig tree, and all the trees;
Rare words are the text's own signal of a deliberate thread: the fewer the occurrences, the more the places it appears belong together.
The fig tree therefore has a double meaning: when the wild is tamed or when sins abound. Like the believer's faith that shriveled up before it will flower, so also sinners will glory through the grace of their transgressions. On the one hand is the fruit of faith, and on the other the lewdness of unbelief. The gardening of the Evangelist as farmer produces the fruit of the fig tree for me. We must not despair if sinners cover themselves with the leaves of the fig tree as with a garment of deceit, so that they may veil their conscience.
Behold the fig tree and all the trees - Christ spake this in the spring, just before the passover; when all the trees were budding on the Mount of Olives, where they then were.
When we see a nation filling up the measure of their iniquity, we may conclude that their ruin is nigh; when we see the ruin of persecuting powers hastening on, we may thence infer that the kingdom of God is nigh at hand, that when the opposition given to it is removed it shall gain ground.
1834–1892
I have already said that I conceive our Lord Jesus Christ to have regarded the destruction of Jerusalem as "the beginning of the end." Although some 1800 years have rolled away since that terrible event, we, with Him, may make but small account of the interval and regard it all as one dispensation of passing away. That beautiful city was the very crown of the entire earth because God had dwelt there.
The subject of this portion of our Lord's great prophecy, is His own second coming to judge the world. The strong expressions of the passage appear inapplicable to any event less important than this. To confine the words before us, to the taking of Jerusalem by the Romans, in an unnatural straining of Scripture language. We see, firstly, in this passage — how terrible will be the circumstances accompanying the second coming of Christ. Our Lord tells us that "there will be signs in the sun, moon and stars.
