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Mat_21:21 f. Instead of telling the disciples, in reply to their question, by what means He (in the exercise of His divine power) caused the tree to wither, He informs them how they too might perform similar and even greater wonders (Joh_14:12), namely, through an unwavering faith in Him (Mat_17:20), a faith which would likewise secure a favourable answer to all their prayers. The participation in the life of Christ, implied in the πίστις , would make them partakers of the divine power of which He was the organ, would be a guarantee that their prayers would always be in harmony with the will of God, and so would prevent the promise from being in any way abused.
The affair of the fig-tree ( τὸ τῆς συκῆς , comp. Mat_8:33) should neither be explained on natural grounds (Paulus says: Jesus saw that the tree was on the point of dying, and that He intimated this “in the popular phraseology”! Comp. even Neander, Baumgarten-Crusius, Bleek), nor regarded as a mythical picture suggested by the parable in Luk_13:6 ff. (Strauss, de Wette, Weisse, Hase, Keim), but as the miraculous result of an exercise of His will on the part of Jesus,—such a result as is alone in keeping with the conception of Christ presented in the Gospel narrative. But the purpose of the miracle cannot have been to punish an inanimate object, nor, one should think, merely to make a display of miraculous power (Fritzsche, Ullmann), but to represent in a prophetic, symbolical, visible form the punishment which follows moral barrenness (Luk_13:6 ff.),—such a punishment as was about to overtake the Jews in particular, and the approach of which Jesus was presently to announce with solemn earnestness on the eve of His own death (Mat_21:28-44; Mat_22:1-14; Mat_22:23-25). It is true He does not make any express declaration of this nature, nor had He previously led the disciples to expect such (Sieffert); but this objection is met partly by the fact that the πῶς of the disciples’ question, Mat_21:20, did not require Him to do so, and partly by the whole of the subsequent denunciations, which form an eloquent commentary on the silent withering of the fig-tree.
αἰτήσητε ἐν τῇ προσευχῇ ] Comp. note on Col_1:9 : what ye will have desired in your prayer.
πιστεύοντες ] Condition of the λήψεσθε . He who prays in faith, prays in the name of Jesus, Joh_14:13.