of worship, He found the basest form of corruption: greed. After Jesus purged the temple, Peter took notice of this same tree and marveled at the effect of Christ’s curse: “Rabbi, look, the fig tree which You cursed has withered!” (Mark 11:21). As the context strongly intimates, this curse of Christ was not directed against the fig tree as such, as much as it was directed (for His disciples’ benefit) against His unrepentant people as a sign of their divine visitation in judgment. This is marked by