Hosea 9:10

Similarly, the law of the Old Testament, which we said the image of the fig tree represented, threw away the first Jewish people who were useless, that is, sinful and wicked. When these sycophants, to use the Greek word, had been rejected, that is, the conceited and worthless Israelites, there created for Christ through grace as its mother, the rich and fruitful Christian people who were further brought to perfect knowledge of the gospel. Although there is a genus of fig trees that brings its first fruits to maturity, called double bearing, it may signify those of whom it is said, "The Lord loved those figs as his precursors." The patriarchs are the precursors.

"As I found grapes in the desert, I saw Israel, as the first figs of the fig tree in the top thereof: but they went in to Beelphegor, and alienated themselves to that confusion, and became abominable, as those things were which they loved." LXX: "As I found Israel in the desert like a grape, and as I saw their fathers like a fig tree's temporary figs, but they entered Baal Peor and became alienated in confusion and became abominable like their love." For in other examples, we read: "and they became beloved, as if abominable," which is more consistent with the truth. When the whole world was deserted and did not have knowledge of God, I found, he says, the people of Israel like a grape in the wilderness, and how he found them, he says: "As the first fruits of the fig tree, in the top of it I saw their fathers. Therefore, the people were found in Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And note the property, the parents are seen, the people are found, and in both there is a vineyard and fig tree, under which those who trust in the Lord are said to rest. But they, having been led out of Egypt, fornicated with the Midianite women, and went into Beelphegor, the idol of the Moabites, which we can call Priapus. Finally, "Beelphegor" is interpreted as an idol of tentacles, having "skin" on its top, i.e., on its summit, to show the obscenity of the male member. And because they entered into Beelphegor, they thus alienated themselves from God, to their own confusion, that is, they worshipped idols. As it is written, "For by whom a man is overcome, for him he is become also the slave" (2 Peter 2:19), and as those who serve their appetites, calling their belly their god (Philippians 3), so those who serve their lust have Beelphegor as their god. "And they became," he says, "abominable, like those whom they loved," according to what is written in the Psalms: "Let those who make them become like them, and all who trust in them" (Ps. 134:18) so that not only are idolaters, but also the idols named. But the Lord said in his passion: "I trod the winepress alone, and from the peoples no one was with me" (Isaiah 63:3). And in the Psalm: "Save me, O Lord, for the godly one is gone; for the faithful have vanished from among the children of man" (Psalm 12:1). When the whole world was held in sin, and the nations knew not God, and Israel had cast away Him whom they had formerly known, first…