Verse 6
6. If ye had faith See notes on Matthew 21:21-22 and Matthew 17:20.
Sycamine tree Alford makes a distinction between the sycamore and the sycamine; making the former a mulberry, from which the silkworm is fed, and the latter a species of fig. But Dr. Thomson identifies them as one. The sycamore or sycamine is a tree which bears seven times a year an insipid sort of green fig, spreading its branches broadly above, and its roots as broadly and very deeply below, so that transplanting would be indeed miraculous. “The mulberry,” he says, on the contrary, “was more easily plucked up than any tree of its size, and the thing is very often done. Hundreds are plucked and burned for firewood.”
Planted in the sea Faith is able to pluck from the earth, and plant in the sea; and this last may be pronounced the greater miracle of the two. A sycamore, planted and maintaining its stand in the turbulent waves, is fancifully compared by Bengel to a Christian placed by God in this troublesome scene of sublunary storms.
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