TGBC and on a colt
TGBC Tuesday, March 20: Luke 19:28-48
After he had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem.
When he had come near Bethpage and Bethany, at the place called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of the disciples, saying, ‘Go into the village ahead of you, and as you enter it you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, “Why are you untying it?” just say this: “The Lord hath need of it.” ’ So those who were sent departed and found it as he had told them. As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, ‘Why are you untying the colt?’ They said, ‘The Lord hath need of it.’ Then they brought it to Jesus; and after throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. As he rode along, people kept spreading their cloaks on the road.
As he was now approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, saying,
‘Blessed is the king
who comes in the name of the Lord!
Peace in heaven,
and glory in the highest heaven!’
Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, ‘Teacher, order your disciples to stop.’ He answered, ‘I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.’
As he came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, ‘If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. Indeed, the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up ramparts around you and surround you, and hem you in on every side. They will crush you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave within you one stone upon another; because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God.’
Then he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling things there; and he said, ‘It is written,
“My house shall be a house of prayer”;
but you have made it a den of robbers.’
Every day he was teaching in the temple. The chief priests, the scribes, and the leaders of the people kept looking for a way to kill him; but they did not find anything they could do, for all the people were spellbound by what they heard.
Comments. Palm Sunday isn’t it, Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem. In many Episcopal parishes, every year on this day the congregation gathers outside, or down the block, or in the yard or courtyard, and parades into the church and down the aisle waving palm-fronds and singing “All glory, laud and honor, to thee, Redeemer King.”
Luke and Matthew get this story from Mark. Matthew, in usual fashion of citing something from the Hebrew Bible as essential prooftext for his Jewish-Christian audience, says that it happened to accomplish the prophecy of Zechariah 9:9 - -
Luke and Matthew get this story from Mark. Matthew, in usual fashion of citing something from the Hebrew Bible as essential prooftext for his Jewish-Christian audience, says that it happened to accomplish the prophecy of Zechariah 9:9 - -
Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion;
shout, O daughter of Jerusalem:
behold, thy King cometh unto thee:
he is just, and having salvation;
lowly, and riding upon an ass,
and upon a colt the foal of an ass. (Zechariah 9:9 KJV)
Sorry to digress, but, after all, these are my comments and I’ll go where I want; this always reminds me that Matthew has his disciples get both a donkey and her colt, and then apparently has Jesus straddled across both animals as he rides into Jerusalem, and Matthew then elaborates on Mark to explain that this was done to fulfill prophecy. The mind picture is silly, ludicrous, and always makes me stop and wonder how such a misunderstanding of Hebrew poetry with its characteristic repetitions and parallelisms joined by a conjunction, here וְעַל־ עַ֖יִר Hebrew καὶ πῶλον νέον Greek, could happen with Matthew, whom scholars hold to have been a Jew writing for a Jewish-Christian audience. Matthew lifts directly from the Septuagint (Greek language Hebrew bible),
δίκαιος καὶ σῴζων αὐτός,
πραῢς καὶ ἐπιβεβηκὼς ἐπὶ ὑποζύγιον
καὶ πῶλον νέον.
and takes it absolutely literally, instead of poetically as Zechariah wrote (on a male donkey, and on a colt the son of a she-donkey) though the LXX doesn’t necessarily present it poetically. But then, to go back into the tradition, I suppose Matthew was a tax collector not a scholar, and he certainly was no poet. During English literature classes in school Matthew obviously was thinking about recess and baseball. Or soccer. Or Accounting 101, why his practice set didn’t balance. OMG, do I remember that, at both UnivFlorida and UnivMichigan I hated accounting courses with a purple passion.
At any event, after his long journey down from Galilee we have Jesus’ arriving in Jerusalem, acclaimed by his disciples and the crowds gathered there for Passover. Which, as we shall see, makes both civil and temple authorities uneasy, setting the stage for the bloody horror of Good Friday and the ultimate victory of Easter.
In Jesus’ words as he weeps over Jerusalem, it seems to me that Luke, writing perhaps 85 to 95 AD?, is retrospectively reporting Jesus prophesying Jerusalem’s 70 AD catastrophic fall to the Roman army and total destruction of city and temple.
In the text, Jesus then enters the temple and furiously drives out the animals and the moneychangers, which gives the temple authorities all the reason they need to have him put to death. Once he enters the temple, his destiny is “inexorable.”
Again to remember that, for agenda reasons, GospelJohn puts “Jesus cleanses the temple” at the beginning of his story to start the hatred early, while the synoptics, Mk Mt Lk, have it at the end to ignite Holy Week.