“He spake also this parable; A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came and sought fruit thereon, and found none.”
On a Sabbath Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues, and a woman was there who had been crippled by a spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not straighten up at all — the woman's eighteen-year bondage to a crippling spirit is the chapter's central image of what the kingdom comes to release. Jesus sees her without being asked, calls her forward, places his hands on her, and declares her free: Woman, you are set free from your infirmity.