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Between Bethphage and Jerusalem, on the same slope of Mount Olivet, though not necessarily in the same line of descent, there must have lain another village; a circumstance by no means improbable; for the suburbs of Jerusalem were scattered with villages in every direction. To this village were the two disciples despatched from Bethphage for the ass and the colt, upon which Jesus designed to enter Jerusalem. Though their names are not mentioned, yet we may conjecture that these two were Peter and John; and in order to point out the fulfilment of a remarkable prediction, the fact of their mission is specified by each of the three Evangelists. The account of St. Mark, however, is much the most particular; which, if Peter was one of the messengers, would be easily explained; and next to St. Mark's, St. Luke's. But St. Matthew, with his usual attention to this kind of argument, has noticed the most distinctly of any the conformity of the event to the prediction of it by Zechariah m.

Nor is there any difference in the terms of the several accounts, further than what concerns the precise statement of the orders given to the messengers; in which St. Matthew comprehends both a she-ass and her colt; St. Mark and St. Luke, though by mentioning a colt as such they virtually include also its dam, yet specify only the colt. The true reason of which distinction is not that both were not sent for, but that our Lord, though

σταλται τέλος | πέδον κελεύθου στρωννύναι πετάσμασιν; | εὐθὺς γε νέσθω πορφυρόστρωτος πόρος, | εἰς δῶμ ̓ ἄελπτον ὡς ἂν ἡγῆται δίκη. Agamemnon, 917. Qua ventura Dea est, juvenes timidæque puellæ Prævertunt latas veste jacente vias. Ovid, Amores, iii.

xiii. 23.

Plutarch, Cato Minor, 12: ποτιθέντων τὰ ἱμάτια τοῖς ποσὶν ἡ Badiço. Charito, Lib. iii. 44. line 24: ἡ ̓Αφροδίτη γαμεῖ. πορφυρίδας ὑπεστρώννυον, καὶ ῥόδα καὶ ἴα· μύρον eppaiov BadiČovσns.

m Ch. ix. 9.

he sent for the dam also, intended to ride solely on the colt, and actually rode only on the colt.

The first of these facts is implied in the very terms of the order relating to the colt, as recorded by St.Mark and by St. Luke, though omitted by St. Matthew-e' ὃν οὐδεὶς πώποτε ἀνθρώπων ἐκάθισε ". This circumstance would not have been so distinctly specified, if our Lord had not himself intended to sit upon it now for the first time: and the fulfilment of the prophecy, which had predicted in the first place his riding upon an ass, and in the next, to shew that it was an ass as yet unbroken or put to any common use, on a colt, the foal of an ass, was rendered thereby so much the more striking. The second of the same facts is proved directly by the testimony of St. Mark and of St. Luke, who both affirm that he rode upon the colt; and implicitly by that of St. John; whose use of the term ovάpiov° shews that the animal was a young one of its kind.

It was not possible that Jesus could ride on both the dam and her colt at once; nor probable that he would ride first upon the one and then upon the other *. When therefore St. Matthew says that the disciples, having brought the ass and her colt, put their own robes, éτáv auTv P, this may be explained by the simple consideration that, as both had been sent for, they might think both were wanted, or as yet they did not know which Jesus designed to use. Or, like Matthew xxvii. 44, or Herodotus ii. 121, §. 4, (èπiðévтa dè τὸν νέκυν ἐπὶ τοὺς ὄνους,) it may be resolved into the mere compendium of speech. But when he adds, KaÌ ÈжEкακαὶ ἐπεκάθισεν (ὁ Ἰησοῦς) ἐπάνω αὐτῶν, no one can doubt that he

* Yet this has been supposed: Vide Theophylact, i. 109. C. In Matt. xxi.

n Luke xix. 30. Cf. Mark xi. 2.

o Ch. xii. 14.

p Ch. xxi. 7.

means this to be understood of his sitting on the garments, which served as the ephippia or housings for the occasion. In the first three Evangelists the act in question is distinctly attributed to the disciples; and even in the last it is so implicitly 9: Now these things the disciples understood not at the first-but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written in allusion to him, and these things they had done for him. The observation is intended of the personal agency of the disciples in bringing them to pass. The presence of the ass then, as well as of her colt, may perhaps be accounted for by supposing that, if the colt was still a young one and following the dam, it could not be separated from it; or rather because the female or mother ass being mentioned in the prophecy, the female or mother ass was concerned also in the fulfilment of it. The colt could not be distinctly recognised for such, except by means of its relation to the dam. Nor is it improbable that, while Jesus himself rode on the one, something belonging to him—perhaps his upper or outer garment-might be carried on the other.

In this state would he set out from Bethphage towards the city: nor could he have proceeded far before the enthusiasm of his attendants broke out into Hosannas and Hallelujahs; and St. Luke seems to have critically pointed out both the place where they began to be raised, and the quarter from which they first proceeded. The place was the foot, or as he calls it the karáẞaris *, of the Mount of Olives, when the ρυφή. ὑπώρεια δὲ τὰ πλευρὰ τοῦ ὄρους, τέρμα δὲ τὰ τελευταῖα, καὶ πόδες. The same gloss occurs again, voce Τέρμα and Υπώρεια. So likewise Hesychius.

* Xenophon, Anab. iii. iv. 37 : ἀκρωνυχίαν ὄρους, ὑφ ̓ ἣν ἡ κατάβασις ἦν εἰς τὸ πεδίον. Suidas, ̓Ακρώρεια. εἰς τρία γὰρ διῄρητο τὸ ὄρος· εἰς ἀκρώρειαν, εἰς ὑπώρειαν, εἰς τέρμα. ακρώρεια μέν ἐστιν ἡ κοι

q John xii. 16.

procession would still be five or six stades distant from the city, and had not yet crossed the valley and brook of Cedron, which bounded the mountain at its base. The quarter, from which they proceeded, was our Lord's own disciples; and Hosannas or Hallelujahs, raised upon the grounds which are specified Luke xix. 37, could have begun with none so fitly as with them. Both the fact of their commencement in this quarter, and the propriety with which they had begun there, are illustrated by the remonstrance arising out of the one, and by the answer which vindicated the others. Such a rebuke would hardly have been levelled against them in particular, if they were following the example of others, and not setting an example to the rest themselves. St. John indeed shews that this example was speedily imitated, especially by those who had seen, and who still remembered the raising of Lazarus; so that John xii. 17, 18 will ensue on Luke xix. 37, 38, and then the remonstrance of the Pharisees, with its answer, Luke xix. 39, 40, upon that.

It is in the nature of enthusiastic emotions to be rapidly propagated among large bodies. The acclamations of the disciples therefore were soon caught and reechoed by the multitudes, according to St. Matthew and St. Mark, who went before and who followed after: and the difference, if there is any, in their several Hosannas may consequently be accounted for thus. In St. Luke, these are the acclamations of the immediate followers of Jesus; in St. Matthew and in St. Mark (nearly agreeing together) they are the acclamations of the promiscuous multitude, distinct from them. The strain indeed of all might be very much alike; though, for the sake of his Gentile readers, St. Luke would purposely omit such expressions as r Reland, Palæstina, i. xlv. 294. liv. 351. VOL. III.

G

s Luke xix. 39, 40.

Hosanna; Hosanna, for the Son of David; the kingdom of our father David; and the like; which were intelligible only to Jews, or resolvable into Jewish prepossessions.

Subsequently to the commencement of these acclamations, but before our Lord was arrived at Jerusalem -probably while he was still on the mount of Olives, with the city and the temple to the westward in view before his eyes-the affecting scene of his weeping over it, accompanied by the most lively, minute, and circumstantial prediction of its siege and desolation, any where in Scripture, must have taken placet: the contrast between which, rendered more impressive as it was by his own significant emotion, and the false enthusiasm of the surrounding multitude, is too remarkable to escape our notice. Yet could it not have damped the ardour of the spectators; nor therefore have been rightly comprehended by them at the time; for the same demonstrations of joy and exultation, which had attended Jesus to Jerusalem, accompanied him also into it.

The whole city, as St. Matthew next observes, was shaken or agitated; agitated, by the bustle and ferment of so large a procession, by the joint acclamations of the multitude and of the disciples, and by the natural impulse of curiosity to know what this could mean. As is usual under such circumstances, the train of our Lord would acquire accessions of numbers the further it proceeded; and in his progress to the temple, the crowded streets of Jerusalem, where millions of souls at this time were collected in attendance upon the feast, would swell prodigiously the concourse of his followers. Here then we may best insert that observation of the Pharisees among themselves, John xii.

t Luke xix. 41-44.

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