Parable of the barren fig tree
The Parable of the fig tree is a blunt message about the need to be productive. This short parable appears only in the Gospel of Luke.
This parable is Biblical scientific foreknowledge of the Coase theorem, which predicts that resources are used in their most productive way in the absence of transaction costs. Unproductive resources -- and people -- are akin to the fig tree that stubbornly failed to bear fruit. Also like the Coase theorem, the prior lack of productivity (or happiness) is no limit on success or happiness now and in the future.
This parable confirms the primacy of the future over the past.
Fig trees are mentioned surprisingly often in the Bible: 42 references to "fig tree" in ESV, more than half in the Old Testament. There are additional references to figs also.
The fig tree is the third type of tree mentioned in Genesis, after the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil. Adam and Eve made clothes for themselves from a fig tree after the Fall. Genesis 3:7 .
Literature
A fig tree is part of a famous quote from Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar.[1]
A fig is symbolic of abundance.
