Under the Fig Tree
A thought on John 1:47-48.
‘When Jesus saw Nathaniel approaching, he said of him: “Here truly is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.”
“How do you know me?” Nathanael asked.
Jesus answered, “I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you.”’
Jesus’ commendation of Nathaniel has come to mean something precious to me. A few English translations replace ‘no deceit’ with ‘no guile’ which I find helpful; the Greek word, δόλος (dolos) denotes deceit, guile or trickery. The BSB uses the phrase ‘a true Israelite’ and the NLT ‘a genuine son of Israel’ to bring out the point that Nathaniel, in being without guile, was a spiritual son of Israel.
I was always taught that the name Israel means ‘one who struggles with God’ and that is certainly one meaning of God’s destiny for Jacob, revealed in his change of name from Yakov (‘the deceiver, the supplanter’) to Yisrael the one who wrestles with God and overcomes. But in Hebrew there is also a related meaning of Yashar El (ישר אל) ‘straight to God’, encompassing the idea of honesty and uprightness in relation to one’s creator.
There is something beautiful in this change from crookedness to straightness in the character of Jacob, though it came with a wrench that left him limping. Jacob was the brother the Lord loved, i.e. the most favoured one, to the chagrin of his older twin, Esau. But for all Jacob’s deceitfulness (aided and abetted by his mother, Rebecca), he was the one who reached out and up, who took the initiative with God and wrestled for the blessing.
When I learned about this additional meaning of Yisrael, it was like finding the missing piece of a puzzle. Earlier in the passage Nathaniel’s blunt response to his friend Philip’s enthusiasm for the prophet from Nazareth suggests he was a tough nut to crack. But far from being offended by his scepticism (Nazareth didn’t exactly have the best reputation among the Jews of first century Judea), it seems Jesus saw and loved his heart. In Nathaniel, He suggests, we see the true Israel: a people made to stand straight before God, not cloak their true feelings or intentions or dress them up.
As for Nathaniel, he seems to have accepted that this prophet from Nazareth knew something about him already and was interested to know how this had come about. Jesus’ answer, ‘I saw you under the fig tree’, may seem enigmatic to us, but it clearly had a remarkable impact on his hearer. It’s a guess of course but it suggests to me He had not just seen Nathaniel in the spirit at a particular place and time, but the importance of that moment under the fig tree spoke to His deep knowledge of who Nathaniel was in his inner being.
It may also hint at a deeper meaning beyond the literal given the fig tree itself was a metaphor for the nation of Israel. The link with Jacob/Israel’s story surfaces straight afterwards in Jesus’ allusion to Jacob’s vision of the ladder to heaven, a vision He also promises Nathaniel.
But it is the lack of deceit in both men I keep coming back to. Jesus, as the second person of the Trinity, fully embodied this kind of integrity in every thought, word and act. Loving His father and His people, He also loved the quality of uprightness revealed to him in Nathaniel. The more we seek to imitate Jesus in this, the more any kind of deception (including self-deception) will come to seem abhorrent to us. As Isaiah wrote of the sinless, suffering saviour, “there was no deceit in his mouth”.
