Matthew 21:5

“Tell you the daughter of Zion,

Behold, your King comes to you,

Meek, and riding on an ass,

And on a colt the foal of an ass.”

That Jesus' careful arrangement for the obtaining of the colt, followed by His equally deliberate riding of it into Jerusalem in Passover week, is intended to have significance is undoubted, for while certainly some wealthy pilgrims did ride into Jerusalem on asses at that time, it was not common practise, and it would certainly not have been expected of Jesus, for the pilgrims flocked in continually on foot. Thus He was by it deliberately making Himself stand out, and all would know that by it He was intending to make a declaration. And a careful reading of the witnesses suggests that they saw His intention as being to proclaim His prophetic status (Matthew 21:11; Luke 19:37; John 12:16). It may also be that they saw Him as deliberately using an acted out prophecy in order to remind them of the soon coming Messiah. It was only later that recognition would dawn on many who believed, that it was in fact a declaration that He  was  the Messiah, coming in lowliness to commence the official establishment of His Kingly Rule in Jerusalem (John 12:16), as it had already first been established in Galilee. The quotation from Zechariah was certainly seen by the Jews as Messianic, but Jesus' clothing and demeanour would not have encouraged full recognition.

Note. Writing as a Jewish Christian to Christian Jews Matthew avoids putting emphasis on Jerusalem as far as he can, for while he acknowledges that Jesus is Jerusalem's King, he does not want Christ's Kingship to be seen as tied to Jerusalem, and he considers that the Kingly Rule of Heaven has first been proclaimed in Galilee, which he sees as in a sense its natural home. That is why later he will present Christ's coronation as something which, while having been accomplished in Heaven, is connected with Galilee with its freedom from the old traditional leadership, rather than being connected with Jerusalem (Matthew 28:16). Indeed he sees anything that happened in Jerusalem as being due to the failure of the Apostles immediately to obey the angel's urgent indication that they were to go to Galilee (Matthew 28:7; Mark 16:7), for on hearing the news that He would be awaiting them in Galilee they should have gone at once. It was only unbelief that kept them in Jerusalem. By this he is further affirming that the old Israel, centred on Jerusalem, has been replaced by the new Israel, an Israel which has more in common with Galilee in not being tied to the old ways. For Matthew, as for Paul, the real Jerusalem was now the heavenly Jerusalem (Galatians 4:26), and he wants his readers to see it in that way too. Neither wanted the baggage of the old Jerusalem. As far as they were concerned the old Jerusalem was in the past, and should stay that way.

Luke can, however, present things differently, for to him and his readers Jerusalem was the old capital of ancient Israel and the place where prophecy would be fulfilled, but nothing more. They were in no danger of being sucked in by the old Jerusalem with its powerful religious attractions, for it had no great hold on their hearts, and it could therefore be seen objectively. He is quite happy therefore to connect Christ's heavenly activity with Jerusalem. Moreover, unlike Matthew, he will go on to make clear precisely what the relationship of the new congregation was to Jerusalem. To him Jerusalem was the starting point and there was no danger that Luke's readers might be sucked back to the old ways. When John writes Jerusalem's ties are broken so that again there is no danger of wrong ideas arising from the connection with Jerusalem. Matthew's emphasis therefore must be seen as favouring an early date for his writing, with all ties to Jerusalem intended to be seen as broken.

End of note.