Say to this mountain

Let us review what we know about the narrative content of Mark 11. The author sets up the chapter with Jesus’ Messianic entry into Jerusalem. This procession ends in a quite underwhelming manner as Jesus entered the temple late in the evening to observe the operations of the temple. As Brown puts it, the closure “is a surprisingly pedestrian finale to Jesus’ messianic action of riding up to Jerusalem on a colt in symbolic fulfillment of Zech 9:9” (82). Before Jesus would have another chance in the temple, he cursed a non-defective tree en route. In the temple, Jesus disturbed the typical daily operations by overturning tables and restricting movement in some parts of the temple. While doing all this, he alluded to two major Old Testament prophets. Later on the same day, Jesus left the city, and the disciples noticed that the cursed fig tree had withered. In reply, Jesus says (11:22-25):  

The work of Esther Miquel with which we have extensively interacted already explained much of Mark 11, but there yet remains some knotty portions of Mark 11 requiring text-faithful explanations. In his contribution to the issue, J.R.D Kirk stresses the importance of bringing the full context of Markan Jesus’ Old Testament allusions to bear on one’s reading of Mark 11.  While aggressively disturbing the typical temple operations, Jesus taught the audience by combining two references from the Hebrew Bible when he said, “Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it ‘a den of robbers’” (Mark 11:17).  The referenced Old Testament passages are Isaiah 56:7 and Jeremiah 7:11. Kirk warns against reading these citations in isolation from their respective broader contexts. Instead, he argues that if one reads those citations of Jesus as a Tanakh-literate first century Jew would have done, one could understand the portions of Mark 11 that seem problematic. 

Second Fig Tree Encounter 

As mentioned earlier, Esther Miquel believes that Jesus was so infuriated with how he found the affairs of the temple that he wanted it to cease to exist. Following Jesus’ evening trip to the temple (Mark 11:11), he cursed a fig tree on the next morning for not being productive. Later, when Peter points out to Jesus that the tree has withered, Mark seems to depict Jesus as explaining the phenomenon as an answer to a prayer (Mark 11:20-25), the prayer being the pronouncement, “May no-one ever eat fruit from you again.” That Jesus directed this curse-prayer against the temple and its leadership is clarified by his invitation to his audience to have a similar faith in God: “Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them” (24; emphasis added). The demonstrative, this, is literally referring to the mountain on which the temple was situated. In other words, this Markan prayer is specifically about the destruction of the temple, and not a universal formula for Christians to ask whatever they want from God. Miquel is worth quoting in some detail (149): 

The First Fig Tree Encounter

Having demonstrated that the Gospel of Mark (and all bible books) is a piece of intelligent writing involving careful human writer decisions featuring some literary techniques of the day, we are now ready to wrestle with some issues with the fig tree story.

Here is Mark 11:11-14, 

Jesus entered Jerusalem and went into the temple courts. He looked around at everything, but since it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the Twelve. The next day, as they were leaving Bethany, Jesus was hungry. Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to find out if it had any fruit. When he reached it, he found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs. Then he said to the tree, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard him say it. 

This portion is the first half of the fig tree story since Mark inserts the story of Jesus’ aggressive act in the temple into the narrative beginning from the next verse. Mark prepares the readers for an intercalation with the words, “And his disciples heard it” (11:14; emphasis added). He resumes the fig tree story with these words, “In the morning, as they went along, they saw the fig tree withered from the roots. Peter remembered…” (11:20-21; emphasis added).