Wick Stick
Well-known member
I differ in my interpretation.We see from the first analogy using figs that it concerns all of mankind, Adam.
Adam is not all mankind. Adam is Edom (same word!) and his posterity, the Kenites (Cain in the other story).
Israel is the fig tree. The Kenites joined themselves to Israel after the exodus. Or if you prefer, "Adam" has outfitted himself in an array of fig leaves.
Unfortunately for them, national identity does not confer election. "They are not all Israel, which are of Israel." An enemy has sewn tares among the wheat. Jacob have I loved, but Esau... God hates that fool.
Double unfortunate for Esau/Edom/Adam and Cain and his Kenites, they have chosen the wrong tree with which to clothe themselves. Notwithstanding the sandpapery elegance of the fig leaf, this "fig tree" - Israel - is all bound up in the Mosaic Law, which gives knowledge of good and evil.
Had Edom not so joined himself to a people belabored by the Law, he might have been able to join himself to that other tree, the tree of zoe-life, which is animal life, lawyer-free and unbound by statutes.
But now Edom and Cain are in the worst place. Un-elect, born of the devil, and destined to do his father's deeds, yet bound to God's laws, and by the punishments for failing to uphold them.
He is for the moment camouflaged, a "fig tree" as reckoned by the leaves, but unable to give fruit, because it is not truly a fig tree. As Jesus foretold, a reckoning was at hand to separate the wheat from the chaff, the sheep from the goats, the Kenites from the Israelites. The chaff and the tree that is unable to bear fruit were destined for the pyre. Indeed, they seem to have made their way there.