Ellicot's commentary: "Here they assume the character of a solemn judgment passed not so much on the tree as on that of which it became the representative. The Jews, in their show of the "leaves" of outward devotion, in the absence of the "fruits" of righteousness, were as that barren tree. The sentence which He now passed on the tree, and its immediate fulfilment, were symbols of the sentence and the doom which were about to fall on the unrepentant and unbelieving people"