Biblion Bible Commentary
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Your King Comes
John 12:12-19
12 On the next day a great multitude had come to the feast. When they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, · WEB
A festival crowd meets him with palm branches, and his opponents say something truer than they know.
On the next day a great multitude had come to the feast. When they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, they took the branches of the palm trees and went out to meet him John 12:12–13.
The palms are this account's detail and they were not neutral. Palm branches had been the emblem of national deliverance since the Maccabean liberation, and they were stamped on the coins of the revolt. Waving them at a man entering the capital is a political act.
"Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, the King of Israel!" John 12:13.
The shout is from the psalm sung at the festivals Psalms 118:25–26, and Hosanna is a prayer before it is a cheer — save now. But the last three words are the crowd's own addition, and they are the ones Rome would have noticed.
Jesus, having found a young donkey, sat on it John 12:14.
The response to a coronation shout is an animal. In this account he finds the colt having found — after the shouting starts, which makes the riding a correction of what is being sung rather than a staging of it.
"Don't be afraid, daughter of Zion. Behold, your King comes, sitting on a donkey's colt" John 12:15 Zechariah 9:9. A king coming in war rode a horse; a donkey is what a man rides on his own business in peacetime. He is accepting the title and refusing the army in one gesture.
His disciples didn't understand these things at first, but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things were written about him John 12:16.
The writer's admission again, as at the temple clearing John 2:22. They were in the procession and did not follow it, and the understanding came afterward, from the Scriptures, once the resurrection had rearranged everything.
It is one of the reasons to trust this book. A man inventing a memory does not record that he missed the point at the time.
The multitude therefore that was with him when he called Lazarus out of the tomb... testified about it. For this cause also the multitude went and met him, because they heard that he had done this sign John 12:17–18.
The crowd is explained. This is not general festival enthusiasm; it is the effect of a specific event a mile and a half away, spread by people who were standing there.
"See how you accomplish nothing. Behold, the world has gone after him" John 12:19.
The Pharisees are speaking to each other in exasperation, and this Gospel has a habit of letting hostile characters say true things by accident — as Caiaphas did eight verses into the last chapter John 11:50.
The world has gone after him is meant as a complaint about crowd control. In this book the world is the word that has run since the prologue John 1:10 and through God so loved the world John 3:16, and it is about to be answered in the most literal way available: the very next thing that happens is that some Greeks ask to see him.
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