The Greek adjective hapalos means tender, soft, or young — describing something in its earliest, most pliable state. Appearing only twice in the New Testament (Matthew 24:32; Mark 13:28), it is used in Jesus's Parable of the Fig Tree, where the tender new branch signals the approach of summer — and of His return.
Hapalos appears in one of Jesus's clearest explanatory parables about eschatology. After describing the signs of the end, Jesus says: 'Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it is near, right at the door' (Matthew 24:32–33). The imagery is deliberately agricultural and homely — everyone in an agrarian society knows that tender new growth after winter signals the coming season. The theological point is that the signs Jesus has described — tribulation, cosmic disturbance, the appearing of the Son of Man — are as readable as a fig tree's tender branch. Jesus is calling His disciples to seasonal attentiveness: the same alertness a farmer has to natural rhythms should characterize the church's attentiveness to the signs of the times. Hapalos — softness, newness, vulnerability — is paradoxically the signal of power and nearness.