The King Enters, and the Question Becomes Fruit

Bethphage means “house of unripe figs”, a village on the eastern slope of the Mount of Olives; the fig tree of verse 19 is not far off. Zechariah 14:4 had placed the LORD’s feet on this mountain on the day of his coming, which gave the approach from Olivet weight before a word was spoken.

Only Matthew has two animals. “Tied” recalls Jacob’s blessing on Judah, the tribe of kings: “Binding his foal unto the vine, and his ass’s colt unto the choice vine” (Genesis 49:11). “Over against you” means facing you, across the way.

“The Lord” is kyrios, which could mean the animals’ master or God; here it is Jesus, speaking of himself in a word the owner is expected to accept. Kings had the right to commandeer animals and labour, the practice behind “whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile” (5:41).

This is the ninth of the ten formal fulfilment sayings usually counted in Matthew (1:22; 2:15, 17, 23; 4:14; 8:17; 12:17; 13:35; 21:4; 27:9). The prophet is not named, and with reason: the quotation opens with Isaiah 62:11 and continues with Zechariah 9:9.

Zechariah 9:9 calls the king “just, and having salvation, lowly”. Matthew leaves out the first two and keeps only “meek”, the word of the beatitude, “Blessed are the meek” (5:5), and of Jesus’ self-description, “meek and lowly in heart” (11:29).

The obedience is told in the same shape as Joseph’s at the book’s beginning, who “did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him” (1:24), and the disciples’ at the Passover, who “did as Jesus had appointed them” (26:19). Nothing is added to the instruction.

The disciples’ cloaks serve as a saddle. When Solomon was made king, David had him ride the royal mule to his anointing (1 Kings 1:33, 38). A man set on a king’s animal before a crowd was being publicly proclaimed.

When Jehu was proclaimed king, the captains took their garments and spread them under him on the stairs and blew the trumpet (2 Kings 9:13). Branches were carried when Simon Maccabaeus entered the citadel in triumph (1 Maccabees 13:51). “Strawed” is 1611 English for strewed.

“Hosanna” is Hebrew hoshi‘a na, “save, we pray” (Psalm 118:25), by then a shout of acclamation. Psalm 118 was part of the Hallel sung at Passover, so pilgrims would have had it ready. Jesus quotes the same blessing back to Jerusalem at the end of 23:39.

“Moved” is seio, to shake, the root of seismos, earthquake. The same verb returns when the earth quakes at his death (27:51) and the guards shake at the tomb (28:4). At his birth “all Jerusalem” was troubled with Herod (2:3); now “all the city” is shaken again.

Nazareth appears nowhere in the Old Testament, Josephus or the Talmud; it was a village of a few hundred people. Pilgrims from Galilee name him by his hometown and call him a prophet, a title the leaders will fear in verse 46.

The trade ran in the outer Court of the Gentiles. The moneychangers exchanged coins into Tyrian shekels, the silver required for the half shekel tax of 17:24. Doves were the offering of the poor who could not afford a lamb (Leviticus 12:8). “Seats” is kathedra, the word for Moses’ seat in 23:2.

“Thieves” is lestai, bandits, the word used for the two crucified with Jesus (27:38, 44). Isaiah 56:7 says “an house of prayer for all people”; Mark keeps “for all people”, Matthew stops at “house of prayer”, even though the trade stood in the court open to Gentiles.

After David took Jerusalem a saying arose, “The blind and the lame shall not come into the house” (2 Samuel 5:8), and the Temple Scroll from Qumran barred the blind from the holy city. Only Matthew records healings inside the temple, and it is exactly these who are healed.

“Wonderful things” is thaumasia, used nowhere else in the New Testament; in the Greek Old Testament it names the LORD’s wonders in Egypt (Exodus 3:20). Only Matthew has the children, still echoing the procession’s cry. “Sore displeased” is the verb used of the ten disciples’ indignation in 20:24.

Jesus quotes Psalm 8:2 in its Greek form. The Hebrew reads “hast thou ordained strength”; the Greek Old Testament reads “perfected praise”. Jesus puts his question back to men who were supposed to know the Psalms best: “have ye never read”, as in 19:4.

Bethany is about three kilometres east, over the ridge of the Mount of Olives, and the house of Simon the leper there (26:6) may be where he stayed. “Lodged” is aulizomai, to spend the night, often in the open; Passover crowds overflowed the city.

The verb for hunger is the one used after the forty days of fasting in the wilderness (4:2). It is early, on the walk from Bethany, and no meal has been mentioned. Matthew states it plainly and moves on.

Fig trees put out small green fruit, paggim in Hebrew, with or before their first leaves in spring, and these were eaten. A tree in full leaf with none was barren for the year. Mark adds that “the time of figs was not yet” (Mark 11:13); Matthew omits it. “Presently” meant immediately in 1611.

In Mark the disciples notice the withered tree the next morning (Mark 11:20–21). Matthew compresses it: the withering is instant, and they see it happen. Their amazement is at the speed; “How soon” means how quickly.

“Doubt not” is diakrino, to be divided in one’s own judgement. They are on the Mount of Olives road, and from Olivet on a clear day the Dead Sea can be seen to the east. It is an inference that “this mountain” means Olivet itself, or the temple mount they are walking toward, but the phrase points at something visible.

The promise restates 7:7–8, “Ask, and it shall be given you”, now with one condition attached: “believing”. Its reach matches 18:19, where two who agree “as touching any thing” are promised it will be done.

The delegation is chief priests and elders, two of the three groups of the Sanhedrin. The same two groups take counsel to put him to death in 27:1. “These things” most naturally points back to the temple action of verse 12. Matthew alone adds that he was teaching when they arrived.

Answering a question with a question was an ordinary move in rabbinic debate, and here it carries a condition: answer mine, and I will answer yours. “One thing” is literally one word. The exchange is formal, like a hearing.

“From heaven” is a reverent way of saying from God, the same habit behind Matthew’s “kingdom of heaven”. In 3:7 Pharisees and Sadducees had come out to John’s baptism, and John had called them a generation of vipers. “Reasoned with themselves” is the verb used of the disciples muttering about bread in 16:7.

Nearly the same sentence explained Herod: “he feared the multitude, because they counted him as a prophet” (14:5). Herod Antipas killed John anyway; the chief priests cannot even speak about him. John is dead, and his reputation still restrains them.

“We cannot tell” is ouk oidamen, we do not know. Jesus does not answer “neither do I know”, but “neither tell I you”. They claim ignorance; he declines to speak. The exchange ends with the question of verse 23 still on the table and everyone aware of the answer.

“What think ye?” is Matthew’s recurring invitation to judge (17:25; 18:12; 22:42). “Son” here is teknon, child, an affectionate address, not the formal huios. “To day” gives the request urgency. Only Matthew has this parable.

“Repented” is metamelomai, to regret, to change one’s mind afterward, not the usual word for repentance. It is the verb used when Judas “repented himself” and returned the silver (27:3). A changed mind is shown by the going, not by any word.

The Greek of his answer is two words, “I, sir”, as emphatic as “Here I am” and as formal as a servant’s reply. He calls his own father kyrie, sir or lord. The courtesy is spotless and costs him nothing.

“Whether of them twain” is 1611 English for which of the two. Some manuscripts, including Codex Vaticanus, reverse the order of the sons, and Jerome knew copies in which the leaders answer “the last”. “Go into the kingdom... before you” is proago, to lead the way, to go on ahead.

“The way of righteousness” recalls Jesus at the Jordan, submitting to John’s baptism “to fulfil all righteousness” (3:15). The verb in “repented not afterward” is metamelomai again, the first son’s verb from verse 29. The leaders were given the chance to be that son and declined it.

Absentee owners were familiar in Galilee. The Zenon papyri of the third century BC show Apollonius, finance minister in Egypt, running a vineyard estate at Beth Anath in Galilee through agents, and an agent sent to collect a debt in the region being driven out of the village. “Went into a far country” is one Greek word, to go abroad.

A new vineyard gave no harvest for years; Leviticus 19:23–25 forbade the fruit of a new planting for three years and made the fourth year’s fruit holy. The owner’s first claim comes only after a long wait. Matthew says he sent for “the fruits of it”, his fruits, not a share.

Each verb has a history. Jeremiah was beaten and put in the stocks (Jeremiah 20:2); Urijah the prophet was killed with the sword (Jeremiah 26:23); Zechariah son of Jehoiada was stoned in the temple court (2 Chronicles 24:21). Jesus will lament over the city that “stonest them which are sent” (23:37).

Second Chronicles 36:15–16 tells it the same way: God sent his messengers, rising up early and sending, “but they mocked the messengers of God”. The larger second delegation fares no better than the first. The owner’s patience grows as the tenants’ violence does.

“Reverence” is entrepo, to turn toward someone in respect or shame. An agent carried the authority of the one who sent him, and a son most of all. “My son” sounds after the voice has twice said “my beloved Son” in this book (3:17; 17:5).

“Come, let us kill him” is word for word the Greek of Joseph’s brothers when they saw him coming across the field: “Come now therefore, and let us slay him” (Genesis 37:20). The tenants may be reasoning that an heir’s arrival means the owner has died, leaving the land to whoever holds it.

Mark has the tenants kill the son and then throw out the body (Mark 12:8). Matthew and Luke reverse the order: cast out, then slain. That matches the crucifixion outside the city walls, to which the Letter to the Hebrews later points (Hebrews 13:12).

Isaiah’s vineyard song does the same thing: “judge, I pray you, betwixt me and my vineyard” (Isaiah 5:3). The hearers are asked to rule on the case before they realise they are its subject, as Nathan’s parable caught David.

The Greek has a play that English loses: kakous kakos apolesei, “the wretches he will wretchedly destroy”. Only Matthew puts the verdict in the hearers’ mouths. “Fruits in their seasons” echoes Psalm 1:3, the tree “that bringeth forth his fruit in his season”.

Psalm 118 is the psalm the crowds shouted at the gate in verse 9. “Head of the corner” may mean the cornerstone at the base or the capstone above; scholars differ. Many have noticed a Hebrew play between ben, son, and eben, stone, which would join the killed son to the rejected stone.

Only Matthew has this sentence. “Nation” is ethnos, singular, a people defined by its fruit. The line takes up John’s warning at the Jordan: “bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance”, and every tree that does not is hewn down (3:8, 10).

The verse is missing from some early witnesses and is bracketed in modern editions; it closely matches Luke 20:18. Its first half draws on Isaiah 8:14–15, a stone of stumbling on which many shall fall and be broken. “Grind to powder” is likmao, to winnow, the verb Daniel’s Greek uses for the stone that shatters the statue (Daniel 2:44).

“His parables”, plural, takes in both vineyard parables. The chief priests and Pharisees are paired here for the first time in Jerusalem; they will appear together again after the crucifixion, asking Pilate to seal the tomb (27:62).

The crowd’s estimate from verse 11, “the prophet”, protects him for now. This is why the arrest will be planned away from the crowds, “not on the feast day, lest there be an uproar among the people” (26:5), and carried out at night in a garden.