Mark 11:13

(13) For the time of figs was not yet.—It has been sometimes urged that this gives the reason for our Lord’s coming to seek “if haply he might find” fruit. The fig season had not come, and therefore the fruit, if any had been borne, would not have been gathered. There is nothing, however, against taking the words in their more natural sequence. The precocious foliage had suggested the thought that some of the early ripe figs might be already formed; but it was no exception, as far as fruit was concerned, to others of its kind. For it, as for them, the season, even of the earliest fruit, had not come. The seeing the fig-tree “afar off,” is a touch peculiar to St. Mark, and adds force to the narrative, as implying a keener pressure of hunger than St. Matthew’s description.