a colt which apparently had never
borne another rider. He rather meant by claiming the ass and by riding
into Jerusalem upon it to assert His royalty; but He did not choose a
horse, because that animal would have suggested royalty of quite another
kind from His--royalty which was maintained by war and outward force;
for the horse and the chariot had always been among the Hebrews symbolic
of warlike force. The disciples themselves, strangely enough, did not
see the significance of this action, although, when they had time to
reflect upon it, they remembered that Zechariah had said: "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. And I will cut
off the chariot from Ephraim, and the horse from Jerusalem, and the
battle bow shall be cut off: and He shall speak peace unto the heathen."

When John says, "these things understood not His disciples at the
first," he cannot mean that they did not understand that Jesus by this
act claimed to be the Messiah, because even the mob perceived the
significance of this entry into Jerusalem and hailed Him "Son of David."
What they did not understand, probably, was why He chose this mode of
identifying Himself with the Messiah. At any rate, their perplexity
brings out very clearly that the conception was not suggested to Jesus.
He was not induced by the disciples nor led on by the people to make a
demonstration which He Himself scarcely approved or had not intended to
make. On the contrary, from His first recorded act that morning He had
taken command of the situation. Whatever was done was done with
deliberation, at His own instance and as His own act.[4]

This then in the first place; it was His own deliberate act. He put
Himself forward, knowing that He would receive the hosannas of the
people, and intending that He should receive them. All His backwardness
is gone; all shyness of becoming a public spectacle is gone. For this
also is to be noted--that no place or occasion could have been more
public than the Passover at Jerusalem. Whatever it was He meant to
indicate by His action, it was to the largest possible public He meant
to indicate it. No longer in the retirement of a Galilean village, nor
in a fisherman's cottage, nor in dubious or ambiguous terms, but in the
full blaze of the utmost publicity that could possibly be given