Two for One

Two for One

Scripture: Matthew 21:1-11

Have you ever noticed it? There’s what appears to be a very odd thing about Matthew’s version of the Palm Sunday story. Versions of that story appear in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, though not in John. In all three of them Jesus rides into Jerusalem to the acclaim of the crowd. People put things down on the road before him, variously clothing or plants, palms of otherwise. Here’s an important thing to understand about this story that you may not have heard. In it Jesus acts out a vision from the otherwise rather obscure Hebrew prophet Zechariah. At Zechariah 9:9 we read:

Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion!

     Shout aloud O daughter

          Jerusalem!

Lo, your king comes to you,

     triumphant and victorious is he,

     humble and riding on a donkey,

          on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

Jesus does what this passage envisions. He rides into Jerusalem humbly and on a donkey.

Or at least in Mark and Luke he rides in on a donkey. At Mark 11:7 we read “Then they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it; and he sat on it.” At Luke 19:35 we find “Then they brought it to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it; and he sat on it.” Thus in both Mark and Luke  it is perfectly clear that there is only one animal on which Jesus rides into Jerusalem. Both of these Gospels call the animal a colt without further specification of what sort of colt, but never mind. It’s just one colt.

Now compare Matthew’s version of the story to the versions in Mark and Luke. In Matthew as in the other two versions Jesus sends disciples into a village to fetch him a ride. In Matthew’s version Jesus says to two disciples “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me.” Matthew 21:2. Then Matthew gives one of his numerous prophecy fulfillment passages: “This took place to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet, saying,

‘Tell the daughter of Zion,

Look, your king is coming to you,

     humble, and mounted on

          a donkey,

     and on a colt, the foal of

          a donkey.’ Matthew 21:4-5.

The two disciples go into the village as directed. Then “they brought and donkey and the colt and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them.” Matthew 21:7.

Do you see the startling difference between Matthew’s version of the story and the other two Gospel versions of it? In Mark and Luke the disciples fetch one animal, and Jesus sits on it. In Matthew they fetch two animals, and Jesus sits on both of them at the same time! We wonder why he would sit on two animals at once. Has he become a circus performer doing stunt riding? And even if he could sit on two animals at once, why would he? It just makes no sense at all.

Now, I’m quite sure Jesus didn’t ride both a donkey and her colt into Jerusalem. Surely he just rode one donkey. So why does Matthew say he rode two? To understand at least one reason why he says that we need to go back to the passage from Zechariah that I quoted above. There we read that this future king rides into Jerusalem “on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” Zechariah 9:9. Does it look to you like Zechariah is talking about two animals, a donkey and her colt? It can perhaps look like that to us. I can assure you however that he’s not. What he’s doing is writing Hebrew poetry. Let me explain.

The Old Testament is full of Hebrew poetry. In most English translations it’s presented in verse form. Those verses are poetry; but they don’t rhyme, and they don’t follow any particular meter. Rather, Hebrew poetry consists of series of couplets. (Sometimes it’s a triplet with three lines rather than a couplet with two, but we won’t worry about that for now.) The poet makes a statement then gives a second line that is closely related to the first line. Most commonly the second line restates the first line in different words. The second line may also develop or comment on the first line. Here’s a random example from Isaiah:

Comfort, O comfort my people says your God.

Speak tenderly to Jerusalem. Isaiah 40:1-2

And another:

In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord.

Make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Isaiah 40:3

In the first example the second line restates and developed the first line by envisioning comforting as speaking tenderly. In the second the second line restates and develops the first line by presenting preparing the way as making a highway straight. The Hebrew words don’t rhyme and were never intended to rhyme. They aren’t in iambic pentameter. They are nonetheless poetry, poetry in a different form.

Now go back to our passage from Zechariah. There we read in part that the coming king is

               humble and riding on a donkey,

                    on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

Here the second line simply restates the first line by calling the donkey on which the king rides a colt, the foal of a donkey. It is obvious once we understand Hebrew poetry that the author intends one animal here not two.

Yet Matthew gives us two animals. Why? There are I think a few different possible answers to that question, though that Jesus actually rode into Jerusalem on two animals isn’t one of them. Maybe he had a bad translation of the Hebrew original of Zechariah into Greek. Or maybe he read the Hebrew himself and didn’t quite understand it. He does after all misquote Zechariah. Where Zechariah has “on a donkey, on a colt the foal of a donkey” Matthew has “on a donkey and on a colt.” (Emphasis added) Or maybe he had a bad version of Mark. Mark is one of his primary sources, and Mark gets Zechariah right. A more likely explanation is that Matthew didn’t understand Hebrew poetry. If he didn’t he could have understood Zechariah as meaning two animals not one whether he read Zechariah in the Hebrew original or in a good Greek translation.

There is however a big problem with that last explanation. The author of the Gospel of Matthew was clearly Jewish. His Gospel is the most Jewish of the Gospels. He quotes Hebrew prophecy more than any other New Testament author. He presents Jesus as a new Moses who comes to Israel from Egypt like Moses did, something that might be important to Jews but certainly less so to Greeks. He has Jesus deliver the largest collection of his saying from the top of a mountain (The Sermon on the Mount) in imitation of Moses. He arranges Jesus’ sayings into five groupings echoing the five books of Moses, that is, the five books of the Torah. So while it’s possible that this author didn’t understand Hebrew poetry, it seems more likely that he did.

All of those possible explanations for what Matthew has done leave us wondering: Even if he thought Zechariah was talking about two animals why didn’t he correct him? By using two animals in the story he gives us a perfectly absurd image. Jesus rides into town sitting on two animals presumably of different size (an adult mare and her presumably shorter foal) at the same time. So here’s a possible explanation of how Matthew may actually have meant to use two animals other than he did it because he thought Zechariah meant two animals.

What’s going on in this story? Jesus comes as a king, but’s not riding on a great warhorse. He’ riding on a humble farm animal, useful to be sure but hardly grand. An animal of peaceful agricultural production not of war. Some scholars describe this scene as guerrilla theater. It is parody. It mocks Pontius Pilate and his Roman legions who always came to Jerusalem with a great show of force at Passover in an effort to prevent rebellion. Jesus is intentionally doing something absurd from the world’s point of view as a prophetic act proclaiming that God’s kingdom is one of peace not war. Having Jesus ride two animals at once makes what is already absurd even more absurd. Perhaps Matthew intentionally misquoted Zechariah and put Jesus on two animals to heighten the absurdity of what Jesus is doing, to make the parody even funnier than it would be with Jesus on only one animal. That at least is the only explanation of Matthew’s two animals that I can come up with that doesn’t have Matthew just making a stupid mistake.

Take that explanation for what it’s worth, but don’t let Matthew’s two animals distract your from the point of the story. Jesus is a king, but he is a very different kind of king. He’s not about power and violence. He’s about peace and providing for all the people. That’s what the donkey symbolizes whether there is one donkey or two. Either way this is a great story of a great God of peace. Thanks be to God.