What does Matthew 21:18 mean?

Mark's telling of these days in Jerusalem before Jesus' arrest falls in chronological order. Matthew, though, tends to group events from the week by topic and not in the order they occurred. He combines two events in this passage. Mark breaks them up, showing that Jesus cursed the fig tree on one day and the disciples noticed it on the next.

Jesus stayed outside the city during the week. It was crowded with travelers coming to Jerusalem for the Passover holiday. He stayed in Bethany, likely at the home of his friends Mary, Martha, and Lazarus.

Jesus is now making the two-mile walk back into the city, and He's hungry. Jesus existed, mysteriously, as both fully God and fully human. In His human form, He experienced all the normal appetites that humans do—without ever serving those appetites in a sinful way. The fact that Jesus experienced such appetites is why the writer of Hebrews could say, "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin" (Hebrews 4:15).