Commentary on Matthew 21:1-11

Jesus’s triumphal entry in Matthew’s gospel is intriguing because it is difficult. 

Why are there two donkeys? Why does Jesus enter Jerusalem seated on a donkey and a colt? It is impossible, even ridiculous; it makes no sense.

And yet this is exactly what Matthew says: “[The disciples] brought the donkey and the colt and put their cloaks on them and he sat on them” (21:7). He sat on them.

Nor does Matthew say it just once. He says it twice more; he insists on the two donkeys. Jesus tells his disciples they will find “a donkey (onos) tied up and a colt (pōlos) with her” (21:2); he tells them to say to anyone who asks, “The Lord needs them” (21:3). He is going to sit on them both.

Matthew is the only gospel to mention two donkeys. Mark (whom Matthew is following in this narrative) has the colt (pōlos), as does Luke; John has a young donkey (onarion); in all the other gospels, there is just one animal. 

What is Matthew doing? Is this just excessive literalism, Matthew reading the parallelism of Zechariah 9:9 (“humble and seated upon a donkey and upon a colt the foal of a donkey,” quoted in Matthew 21:5) to require two donkeys? 

As often in Matthew, the Old Testament is illuminating. A closer look at Zechariah helps us see what Matthew is doing.

Zechariah 9:9 announces the coming of the king: “Say to daughter Zion, behold your king comes to you, humble …” This is the time of fulfillment, Matthew tells the reader. The prophets spoke about this day. Jesus riding into Jerusalem on the donkey and the colt is the king God’s people have been waiting for!

Is Matthew just proof-texting, then? Does he (as some scholars have suggested) not understand Hebrew parallelism, thus making two animals out of one?

This seems unlikely, given Matthew’s sophisticated and often profound use of the Scriptures throughout his gospel. He likely does understand poetic parallelism—and still he wants two animals.

Why?

Matthew adds a word to Zechariah. Zechariah has the donkey (hypozygion, in the Greek of the Septuagint) and the colt (pōlos). But where is the onos? 

The onos appears not in Zechariah but in Genesis 49:10–11, in the blessing Jacob gives to Judah. “The scepter [Septuagint: ruler] shall not depart from Judah,” Jacob says (49:10). “Tying his foal (pōlos) to the vine and the colt (pōlos) of his donkey (onos) to the choice vine, he washes his garments in wine …” (49:11).

Genesis 49:9–11 became a key passage in Jewish messianic expectation. In adding the word onos to Zechariah’s prophecy, in repeating it, in including both the onos and the polos, Matthew draws Genesis 49:9–11, and with it Jewish messianic hope, into this moment of Jesus’s triumphal entry.

“Your king comes to you,” just as Zechariah has said. And this king who comes on both the colt and the donkey of the blessing given long ago to Judah now enacts the promise to Judah as he enters Jerusalem. “The ruler shall not depart from Judah … until tribute comes to him and the obedience of the peoples is his” (Genesis 49:10): That ruler is here, now, Matthew is saying, in Jesus.

Matthew makes the point again as Jesus rides into Jerusalem. The people shout, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” Only in Matthew do they hail Jesus as Son of David. They are calling him king—the Davidic king, king in the line of Judah (see also Matthew 1:2–6).

Thus those two donkeys are important. With them, by adding the onos—however awkward the image, and precisely because the image is awkward—Matthew identifies Jesus as Son of David, fulfiller of the promise to Judah, the ruler whose reign shall not end until he draws all the peoples to himself (Genesis 49:10d).

And it is Jesus who tells his disciples to find the two donkeys. Jesus declares himself to be the long-awaited king, in a kind of enacted parable. The two donkeys, so unusual—so unnecessary, even—make the point. This is not just any king, humbly riding into Jerusalem on a donkey. This is the Son of David, inheritor of God’s promise to Judah of a throne, and the one who is bringing the promise to pass. Jesus is Israel’s hope.

Palm Sunday, seen through Matthew’s strange narrative—those two donkeys—gives us Jesus as king, Davidic king, in whom Israel’s ancient hope for God’s reign over all the world is being fulfilled, beginning on this day in Jerusalem.

Matthew offers one more reflection on who Jesus is for this Palm Sunday. In the common lectionary cycle the palms and shouts of praise for Jesus lead directly into the Passion. In my Anglican tradition we celebrate both palms and Passion in the same service: first the procession with hymns and palms, singing Jesus’s praise as we enter the church; and then, at the time of the gospel, the reading of the Passion narrative. Even as our king enters Jerusalem in glory, the cross looms.

Matthew, too, sees the cross looming. For he ends this triumphal entry with an irony: The crowds who have just hailed Jesus as “Son of David”—that is, the long-awaited king—say, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth of Galilee” (21:11). The “prophet” Jesus? Their words come nowhere near a full understanding of who Jesus is and what a hope, what a victory, he brings.

And so the way to Golgotha is paved in the tension between what Matthew (and Jesus himself) is showing us about Jesus in those two donkeys, and what the people, in the end, can see. That final irony, the people’s massively inadequate response to who Jesus is, to what they have just seen as he rides into Jerusalem, is unsettling. It drives us, perhaps, to ask what our response to Jesus really is—we who have just waved our palm branches in his praise: Do we, in fact, name Jesus king of our lives?