Mark 11:8

spread their garments in the way i. e. their "abbas" or "hykes," the loose blanket or cloak worn over the tunic or shirt. So myrtle-twigs and robes had been strewn by their ancestors before Mordecai, when he came forth from the palace of Ahasuerus (Targ. Esther 8:15), so the Persian army had honoured Xerxes when about to cross the Hellespont (Herod. VII. 54), and so Robinson tells us the inhabitants of Bethlehem threw their garments under the feet of the horses of the English consul at Damascus, whose aid they were imploring (Biblical Researches, II. 162).

branches "soþeli oþere men kittiden bowis, or branches, fro trees," Wyclif. These were not the "branches" (kladoi) cut from the trees as they went along, mentioned in Matthew 21:8, but "mattings" (stoibades) which they twisted out of the palm-branches as they passed. The original word denotes (1) a bed of straw, rushes, or leaves, whether strawed loose or stuffed into a mattress; (2) a mattress, especially of soldiers; (3) the nestor lairof mice or fish.

off the trees The reading of some MSS. here is from the gardens, and the verse would run, And many strewed their garments in the way, and others twisted branches, cutting them from the gardens. Eastern gardens are not flower gardens, nor private gardens, but the orchards, vineyards and fig-enclosures round a town. The road from Bethany to Jerusalem wound through rich plantations of palm trees, and fruit- and olive-gardens.