Your King Comes

Matthew 21:5 NKJV

"Tell the daughter of Zion, 'Behold, your King is coming to you,
lowly, and sitting on a donkey, a colt, the foal of a donkey.'"

Christ's public Entry into Jerusalem seems so altogether different from--we had almost said, inconsistent with--His previous mode of appearance. Evidently, the time for the silence so long enjoined had passed, and that for public declaration had come. And such, indeed, this Entry was. From the moment of His sending forth the two disciples to His acceptance of the homage of the multitude, and His rebuke of the Pharisee's attempt to arrest it, all must be regarded as designed or approved by Him: not only a public assertion of His Messiahship, but a claim to its national acknowledgment. And yet, even so, it was not to be the Messiah of Israel's conception, but He of prophetic picture: "just and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass." ... There can, at least, be no question that this prophecy was intended to introduce, in contrast to earthly warfare and kingly triumph, another Kingdom, of which the just King would be the Prince of Peace, Who was meek and lowly in His Advent, Who would speak peace to the heathen, and Whose sway would yet extend to earth's utmost bounds.

Alfred Edersheim