and if then it produces fruit in the future, well and good; but if not, you shall cut it down.’”​—Luke 13:6-9.

5, 6. (a) By use of a real fig tree, how did Jesus indicate that the symbolic fig tree would be cut down? (b) When was that symbolic fig tree cut down, as indicated by what development?

⁵ At almost the middle of this fourth year Jesus indicated that the fruitless national “fig tree” was to be cut down. On Monday, Nisan 10, 33 C.E., on his way to Jerusalem Jesus came up to a fig tree. Though it had leaves, it bore no fruit. At this Jesus cursed the fig tree, saying: “Let no one eat fruit from you anymore forever.” What happened? We read: “When they were passing by early in the morning, they saw the fig tree already withered up from the roots. So Peter, remembering it, said to him: ‘Rabbi, see! the fig tree that you cursed has withered up.’”​—Mark 11:12-21.

⁶ Well, now, was Jesus taking spite out on an unintelligent tree? No, but he was using that barren fig tree as an illustration. That fig tree pictured the nation of Israel to which Jehovah had sent his Son to gather fruitage in the form of supporters of the true Messiah or Christ. When, under the leadership of its high priest and other religious guides, the nation rejected Jesus as the representative of God’s kingdom, the several hundred individuals that did accept him were as nothing. Like a taxable tree cumbering the ground, that symbolic fig tree deserved to be cut down, for it came under God’s curse. (Compare Deuteronomy 28:15-68.) Fifty-one days after Jesus Christ was killed as though a false Messiah, the Israelite “fig tree” was cut down, for God then brought forth a new nation, Christian Israel, spiritual Israel, to produce Kingdom fruitage. (Matt. 21:43; 1 Pet. 2:9; Gal. 6:16; Jas. 1:1) The cut-down “fig tree” was consigned to the fire at Jerusalem’s destruction in 70 C.E.