Naughty Figs

Naughty figs (Hebrew te'enim ra'im, "bad figs") appear in Jeremiah's vision of two baskets of figs set before the temple (Jer. 24:1–10). The vision came after the first Babylonian deportation (597 B.C.). The good figs represented the exiles carried to Babylon, whom God promised to restore and make his own people. The bad figs — described as "so bad they cannot be eaten" — represented Zedekiah and the remnant left in Judah together with those who went to Egypt, whom God would make a reproach and a curse among all nations. The vision inverted popular expectation: those remaining in the land were not the fortunate ones but the abandoned ones.