I found Israel like grapes in the wilderness. I saw your fathers as the first ripe in the fig tree at its first season; but they came to Baal Peor, and consecrated themselves to the shameful thing, and became abominable like that which they loved.
⛓ Read Hosea 9 forward — the whole chapter and its afterlife →Where this passage surfaces again, sorted by the strength of the link. Each kind of reuse — formal quotation, deliberate allusion, faint echo, figural pattern — carries its own mark. Follow any reference to read it in place.
Allusion3
A deliberate verbal borrowing without a citation formula.
Israel was found 'like the first fruit on the fig tree,' a hope reversed in 9:16 ('they shall bear no fruit'). The fig tree as figure for Israel's fruitfulness-turned-barren coheres tightly with the parable's verdict.
Medium confidenceHosea recalls finding Israel 'like the firstripe in the fig tree at her first time,' a metaphor of early promise turned to apostasy and barrenness (Hos 9:16, 'their root is dried up, they shall bear no fruit'). The dried-up-root motif coheres tightly with the tree withered from the roots in 11:20, reinforcing the figural reading.
Medium confidence'I found Israel like grapes in the wilderness; I saw your fathers as the first ripe in the fig tree,' followed by their apostasy and barrenness; the fig tree symbolizes Israel's spoiled fruit, the figural sense Matthew gives the withered tree.
Medium confidence