I am constantly struck by the difficulty of maintaining goodness.  Good habits are easily broken or turned into bad ones.  Things we like are easily idolized we can make anything about ourself.  It is so easy to push ourselves into texts or even the words of other people as they come out of their mouth.  Taking a lot of time to really observe texts and ask a lot of questions can really help us to get outside of ourselves.

The Entry of Christ into Jerusalem, Louis Felix Leullier. 19th century.

So some questions about Mark 11:1-11. Why do we always talk about Jesus riding a donkey when Mark says ‘foal’?  Why did Jesus choose this animal?  Has this ever happened in Scripture?  Why did they shout Hosanna?  What did they mean by the kingdom of David? Why did Jesus leave Jerusalem, this and the following nights?  What is the greater thread that compels Mark to include this in the text as he does now?

I’m so glad you asked.  In answering these questions I came up with some answers from other texts.  Well, mark says ‘colt’ but John and Matthew say it was the cold of a Donkey.  As it is written in Zechariah 9,

Behold, your king is coming to you;

righteous and having salvation is he,

humble and mounted on a donkey,

on a colt, the foal of a donkey

. . .

and he shall speak peace unto the heathen:

and his dominion shall be from sea even to sea,

and from the river even to the ends of the earth.

There are so many passages in the Old Testament that had to have the disciples slapping their heads, when they realized how thick they had been.  We think of the Old Testament as an archaic theocracy where people were forced to follow a bunch of rules until a king would come and kill everyone and the Jews would rule the world.  But it’s right here he would speak peace to the heathen and his dominion shall spread over the whole earth.  Which has basically happened.  Christianity is still the fastest growing religion and there are Christians in almost every corner of the earth.

But back to donkey’s.  Donkey is a very common word in the Old Testament.  They were the basis of much case law, seemed to be ridden by women frequently and even spoke in one instance.  Judges 5:10, 10:4 and 12:14 all show royalty riding donkeys.  I Kings 1:33 shows king Solomon riding David’s mule to his coronation.  The people had to be seeing the comparisons here.  Solomon was the ultimate philosopher king, by any standard.  Yet he failed greatly now Jesus would take his place riding his donkey to his coronation to a kingship that would look strange at first but would conquer the world, and he would reign forever.   Also interesting we see Jacob associating a colt with the tribe of Judah, in the last days.  That’s a whole study in itself, but the passage connects the vine and blood with a donkey(Genesis 49:8-12).   From these verses and other customs of the time we see that leaders would often ride donkey’s when they meant to announce peace.  A king declaring war and leading an army would enter a city on a war horse, but Jesus is seeking to make peace with all men, peace between sinful men and God.  So Jesus chose a donkey. I get the impression that the colt’s owner recognized the disciples.  No doubt they had made a big raucous in Jerusalem, and we later see a servant girl recognized Peter (Mark 14:66).

Now, there is really no reason to suspect that the people who welcomed their king, were the same ones yelling crucify him.  The fact that Judas had to betray Jesus to the religious leaders, late at night in a secret place indicates that the people were on Jesus’ side.  I’m sure after his crucifixion, many people doubted that he was the messiah.  But after the resurrection the church grew and was present until the Muhammeda conquests shortly before the first crusade.  How did this common idea start? I imagine that this idea was the brain child of a winsome pastor who made the comparison.  And being the overly humble, people waiting to be told how bad we are, that we are, we picked it up and repeat it to this day.  Similar to the way we can be so defeatist about the real spread of his kingdom, on this earth, this very day.   The people loved Jesus.  But there were some holdouts, the temple mount held by the religious leaders.  And so we see Jesus set up camp outside the city, as if he were laying siege.  And he then comes into the city, into the temple and attacks the religious leaders until in Mark 12:34 it says “And after that, no one dared to ask him any questions.”.  Jesus had vanquished his enemies completely he had done what the nation Israel had failed to do when they entered the land.  In a few days he would complete his work, and establish his throne in the line of David forever.