Behold, Your King Comes
1 When they came near to Jerusalem and came to Bethsphage, to the Mount of Olives, then Jesus sent two disciples, 2 saying to them, “Go into the village that is opposite you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her. Untie them and bring them to me. 3 If anyone says anything to you, you shall say, ‘The Lord needs them,’ and immediately he will send them.” 4 All this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken through the prophet, saying, 5 “Tell the daughter of Zion, behold, your King comes to you, humble, and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” 6 The disciples went and did just as Jesus commanded them, 7 and brought the donkey and the colt and laid their clothes on them; and he sat on them. 8 A very great multitude spread their clothes on the road. Others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. 9 The multitudes who went in front of him, and those who followed, kept shouting, “Hosanna to the son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!” 10 When he had come into Jerusalem, all the city was stirred up, saying, “Who is this?” 11 The multitudes said, “This is the prophet, Jesus, from Nazareth of Galilee.”
He arranges his own entry into the city, down to the animal — and the crowd's title is right while the city's answer falls short.
When they came near to Jerusalem and came to Bethsphage, to the Mount of Olives, then Jesus sent two disciples,
The entry is told in the earlier account Mark 11:1–19. What is striking in every telling is how deliberately it is staged. A man who has spent the book silencing people about his identity now sends ahead for an animal and rides in.
The ridge of the Mount of Olives is where the road from Jericho comes over and the whole city and temple open up below. It is also where a prophet had said the Lord's feet would stand Zechariah 14:4 — and it is Zechariah that Matthew quotes.
"Tell the daughter of Zion, behold, your King comes to you, humble, and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey" Matthew 21:5 Zechariah 9:9. The prophecy names the animal, and the animal is the message. A king coming in war came on a horse. A donkey is what a man rides on his own business in peacetime, and Israel's kings had ridden one to a coronation 1 Kings 1:33. He is claiming the throne and disclaiming the army in a single gesture, which is precisely the thing his followers have failed to understand for three chapters.
Matthew mentions two animals where the other tellings mention the colt, and the prophecy he quotes names both in its Hebrew way of saying a thing twice. A colt unbroken enough never to have been ridden would go quietly with its mother beside it, which is what the account describes.
"Hosanna to the son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!" Matthew 21:9. 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. The crowd has the title right. What they mean by it is a kingdom of the sort he has just refused, which is why the same city is shouting something else by Friday.
When he had come into Jerusalem, all the city was stirred up, saying, "Who is this?" Matthew 21:10. The city's question is the book's question. And the crowd's answer is true and much too small: "This is the prophet, Jesus, from Nazareth of Galilee" Matthew 21:11. It is the same answer the public gave at Caesarea Philippi Matthew 16:14, from people who were shouting son of David a verse earlier.
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