Tell the daughter of Zion, Behold, your King comes unto you, meek, and sitting upon a donkey, and a colt the foal of a donkey.
Read Chapter 21
George Leo Haydock
AD 1849
Some manuscripts read Isaias, others Zacharias: the text seems to be extracted from both, but particularly the latter, the sense of which is taken, though not verbatim, from the Septuagint version. See Isaias lxii. 2. and Zacharias ix. 9.
But let us look also at the prophecy, that by words, that by acts. What then is the prophecy? Behold, your King comes to you, meek, and riding on an ass, and a young colt; Zechariah 9:9 not driving chariots, like the rest of the kings, not demanding tributes, not thrusting men off, and leading about guards, but displaying His great meekness even hereby.
Ask then the Jew, what King came to Jerusalem borne on an ass? Nay, he could not mention, but this alone.
But He did these things, as I said, signifying beforehand the things to come. For here the church is signified by the colt, and the new people, which was once unclean, but which, after Jesus sat on them, became clean. And see the image preserved throughout. I mean that the disciples loose the asses. For by the apostles, both they and we were called; by the apostles were we brought near. But because our acceptance provoked them also to emulation, therefore the ass appears following the colt. For after Christ has sat on the Gent...
He sat upon an ass for no other reason than to fulfill the prophecy and to show us that our means of conveyance should be humble, for He was mounted not on a horse but on a lowly ass. He fulfills the prophecy (Zech. 9:9) both literally, and in a spiritual sense. He fulfills it literally by sitting as He did in view of all. He fulfills it in a spiritual sense by sitting upon the ass, the burdened Jews, and also upon the foal, the Gentiles who were coltish, untamed and unruly (Gen. 49:10-11). For the ass and the colt had been tethered by the reins of their own sins. Two were sent to loose them, Paul to the Gentiles, and Peter to the circumcised, that is, to the Jews. And even now, there are two that loose us from our sins, the Epistles and the Gospel. Christ comes meekly, for He did not come to judge the world at the first coming, but to save. The other kings of the Hebrews were pillagers and wrongdoers, but Christ is a meek king.
