of current Jewish ideas, for
they were not looking for so meek and peaceful a leader as Zechariah had
conceived; this entrance emphasized the old contradiction between Jesus
and his people's expectations. He accepted the popular welcome with full
knowledge of the transitoriness of the present enthusiasm. As he advanced
he saw in thought the fate to which the city and people were blindly
hurrying, and his day of popular triumph was a day of tears (Luke xix.
41-44). The city was stirred when the prophet of Nazareth thus entered it;
but he simply went into the temple, looked about with heavy heart, and, as
it was late, returned to Bethany with the twelve for the night.

180. On the following day Jesus furnished to his disciples a parable in
action illustrating the fate awaiting the nation; for it is only as a
parable that the curse of the barren fig-tree can be understood. The idea
that Jesus showed resentment at disappointment of his hunger when he found
no figs on the tree out of season is too petty for consideration. He was
drawn to it by the early foliage, for it was not yet the season for either
fruit or leaves. One is tempted to believe, as Dr. Bruce has suggested,
that he had small expectation of finding fruit, and that even before he
reached the tree with its early leaves he felt a likeness between it and
the nation of hypocrites whose fate was so clear in his mind. The
withering of the fig-tree set his disciples thinking; and Jesus showed
that it was an object lesson, promising that the disciples, by the
exercise of but a little faith, could do more, even remove
mountains,--such mountains of difficulty as the opposition of the whole
Jewish nation would offer to the success of their work in their Master's
name.

181. The curse upon the barren fig-tree was spoken as Jesus was going from
Bethany to Jerusalem on the morning after his Messianic entry, that is, on
Monday, and it was Tuesday when the disciples found it withered away (Mark
xi. 12-14, 20-25). On Monday Jesus entered into the temple and taught and
healed (Luke xix. 47; Matt. xxi. 14-16). It is at this point that Mark
inserts the cleansing of the temple which John shows to belong rather to
Jesus' first public visit to Jerusalem. The place which this incident
holds in the first three gospels has already been explained by the fact
that it furnished one cause for the official hostility to Jesus, and that
Mark's story included no earlier visit to the holy city (