"Then he said to the keeper of his vineyard, 'Look, for three years I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree and find none. Cut it down; why does it use up the ground?'

'And if it bears fruit, [well.] But if not, after that you can cut it down.' "

"For indeed the days are coming in which they will say, 'Blessed [are] the barren, wombs that never bore, and breasts which never nursed!'

"For if they do these things in the green wood, what will be done in the dry?"

Behold, the Lord, The LORD of hosts, Will lop off the bough with terror; Those of high stature [will be] hewn down, And the haughty will be humbled.

He will cut down the thickets of the forest with iron, And Lebanon will fall by the Mighty One.

"Son of man, how is the wood of the vine [better] than any other wood, the vine branch which is among the trees of the forest?

"Instead, it is thrown into the fire for fuel; the fire devours both ends of it, and its middle is burned. Is it useful for [any] work?

'To which of the trees in Eden will you then be likened in glory and greatness? Yet you shall be brought down with the trees of Eden to the depths of the earth; you shall lie in the midst of the uncircumcised, with [those] slain by the sword. This [is] Pharaoh and all his multitude,' says the Lord GOD."

He cried aloud and said thus: 'Chop down the tree and cut off its branches, Strip off its leaves and scatter its fruit. Let the beasts get out from under it, And the birds from its branches.

And inasmuch as the king saw a watcher, a holy one, coming down from heaven and saying, 'Chop down the tree and destroy it, but leave its stump and roots in the earth, [bound] with a band of iron and bronze in the tender grass of the field; let it be wet with the dew of heaven, and let him graze with the beasts of the field, till seven times pass over him';

"And even now the ax is laid to the root of the trees. Therefore every tree which does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

"Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

"If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw [them] into the fire, and they are burned.

Anyone who has rejected Moses' law dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses.

For our God [is] a consuming fire.