Mark 11:12

And on the morrow, when they were come out from Bethany, he hungered.

He hungered ... Jesus' hunger was the occasion of his seeking fruit on the fig tree, the showy leaves of which normally indicated fruit. What followed was not a mere peevish reaction of Jesus due to his frustrated desire to eat, but the sudden realization on his part that here was a God-given example of the nation of Israel. It was not even the time of figs, the first days of Passover being far too early for that fruit to have matured, Jesus in his complete humanity having at first been unaware of that fact. As a man, he had unconsciously accepted the pretensions of that fig-tree as true; and, being hungry, he had gone to it in expectation of eating; nor does this in any manner reflect upon the deity of Christ, a deity most conspicuously present within him as the immediate events proved. Suddenly, the freakish fig tree appeared to Jesus as the exact type of Israel, and accordingly he judged it. As Cranfield said:

The most satisfactory explanation of this difficult (miracle) is surely that which is given by the earliest extant commentary on Mark, that of Victor of Antioch, viz., that the withering of the fig tree was an acted parable in which Jesus used the fig tree to set forth the judgment which was about to fall on Jerusalem.[9]

Then let those who cavil at the miracle deny, if they can, the judgment upon Jerusalem which it prophesied. If God did that, why should his harmless warning of it be considered otherwise than as a merciful foretelling of the fate of the chosen people with a view to restraining them and leading them to faith and salvation?