[ p. 325 ]
THE PASSION-WEEK
HIS ENTRANCE INTO JERUSALEM
Jo. xii. 9-19; Mt. xxi. i-li ; Mk. xi. 1-11 ; Lk. xix. 29-44. Mk. xii. 41-44 ; Lk. xxi. 1-4.
Meanwhile what had been happening at Jerusalem ? It was customary for Hellenists—Jews resident abroad in heathen countries—to arrive early that they might have time, ere the Feast began, for ceremonial purification from the defilement of heathen intercourse. Hence the city was already thronged with worshippers from afar. They had heard the fame of the Galilean prophet, and what they learned on their arrival whetted their interest. They were eager to see and hear Him, but in view of the hostility of the rulers it was doubtful whether He would venture to appear, and the question was on every lip : “What think you ? That He will not come to the Feast ?” (Cf. Jo. xi. 55-57) Hardly less than their interest in Jesus was their interest in Lazarus, the man whom He had raised from the dead; and to the annoyance of the rulers they resorted to Bethany to gaze at him. At length it was reported that Jesus was approaching, and when they learned of His arrival at Bethany they trooped out thither and not a few of them confessed their faith in Him. So exasperated were the Chief Priests that they forthwith supplemented their edict for the arrest of Jesus by a resolution to put Lazarus also to death. It reached his ears, and from the fact that neither of [ p. 326 ] them figures in the ensuing narrative it would appear that he and his sister Martha took flight after the public entertainment. Mary, however, in her devotion to the Master remained, and not only stood by His cross and aided in His burial but was privileged with the first vision of Him after the Resurrection.
It would have been perilous for our Lord to brave the hostility of the rulers by entering the city with no other retinue than His feeble band of followers; and the manifestation of popular interest on His arrival at Bethany that Sunday evening suggested to Him a procedure which would not merely ensure Him against immediate molestation but afford an opportunity for a final and singularly impressive appeal to the crowded city. There was an ancient prophecy which pictured the entrance of the Messiah, the King Israel, into His sacred capital: “Rejoice, greatly, O daughter of Zion! shout, O daughter of Jerusalem ! Behold, thy King cometh unto thee. Righteous and victorious He ; meek, and riding upon an ass, yea upon a colt, a she-ass’s foal.” (Zech. ix. 9) Observe the imagery. The Messiah is represented as riding not upon a horse, which the Jews knew only as a battle-charger, but upon an ass, which was not with them, as with the Greeks and Romans, a despised animal but a goodly creature, highly esteemed and ridden by princes on peaceful errands. Andso, when prophet depicted the Messiah as riding on an ass (Cf. Num. xix. 2; 1 Sam vi. 7; 2 Sam. vi. 3), and that a colt hitherto unridden and thus fit for sacred use, he proclaimed Him as the holy and gracious Prince of Peace. It was another sort of Messia that the Jews were [ p. 327 ] expecting; and in those days there was much disputation among the Rabbis how the prophecy might accord with their accustomed dream of a Messiah “coming in the clouds of heaven,” a mighty Conqueror. (cf. Dan. vii. 13)
That ancient scripture being thus familiar and at the same time presenting the spiritual ideal of Messiahship which He had all along so unsuccessfully striven to commend, our Lord bethought Himself that He would enact it after the histrionic fashion congenial to the oriental mind. Probably in the course of the evening’s entertainment He privately arranged with a disciple resident at Bethphage, a neighbouring village on the crest of Olivet barely a mile north-west of Bethany, that he should next morning have a young ass tethered at his door by the cross-road just outside the village. Two of the Twelve would come and fetch it, and to prevent mistake they would be furnished with a password—“The Lord has need of it.”
Next morning He sent the two. They found the ass, and as they untethered it, they were challenged: “What are you about, untethering the colt ? ” They gave the password and got the beast. They led it off to Bethany, and the disciples spread a cloak over its back and mounted the Master. The scene was witnessed by a multitude of spectators, not only the folk of Bethany and its neighbourhood but others more numerous who had come out from Jerusalem; and they caught its meaning. They cut boughs from the palm-trees which lined the road to the city, and carpeted it with their garments and strewed it with blossoms after the manner of a royal progress (cf. 2 Ki. ix. 13); [ p. 328 ] and as the Lord rode forward, they formed in procession, chanting triumphal psalms. “Hosanna ! ” they shouted. “Blessed be He who is coming in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel. Blessed be the coming Kingdom of our father David. Hosanna in the highest! ” (Cf. Pss. cxviii. 25,26, cxlviii. 1)
Curiosity had brought some Pharisees from Jerusalem, and resenting the popular enthusiasm they remonstrated with the Lord. “Teacher,” said they, “rebuke your disciples.” “I tell you,” He answered, “that should these be silent, the stones will cry out.”
Leaving Bethany, they surmounted the crest of Olivet and wound their way down the mountainslope. Across the ravine of the Kidron the city, sacred and dear to every Jewish heart, was standing peaceful and beautiful in the light of that April morning; and as the Lord surveyed her and thought of the disaster which her wild dream of deliverance from the Roman yoke would inevitably precipitate and which would surely have been averted had she recognised in Him her Promised Saviour, tears filled His eyes and a lamentation broke from His lips: “O that you had recognised in this day the things which make for peace ! As it is, they are hidden from your eyes. Days will come upon you when your foes will embank a trench against you, and ring you round, and hem you in on every side, all because you did not recognise the season of your visitation.”
Crossing the Kidron, the procession passed through the city-gate and the wondering citizens gathered to see what was ado and joined the train. As they [ p. 329 ] surged along, the streets shook with the trampling of their feet and resounded with their shouting until, says the Evangelist, “all the city rocked.” (Mt. xxi. 10) It was, as the word implies, as though it I0 were shaken with an earthquake. Thus escorted the Lord took His way to the Temple and, entering its quiet precincts, escaped from the clamour. He would be glad of a season of repose; for the scene which He had enacted would be little pleasing to Him. Had it not been written of Him of old that “He would not cry, nor lift up, nor cause His voice to be heard in the street” ? (Is. xlii. 2; cf. Mt. xii. 19) His entry had been no triumph for Him but a hard ordeal, and He had sustained it not for His own aggrandisement but with a gracious purpose, that He might leave no means untried for winning the obdurate city.
Now that it was over, He was glad of repose; and weary in flesh and spirit He engaged that day in none of His accustomed activities of teaching and healing. It is written that He “surveyed the whole scene” (Mk. xi. 11); and it was probably while He was thus occupied that an incident occurred which engaged His sympathetic regard and evoked from Him a gracious comment. He was seated in that familiar and secluded nook of the Temple-court hard by the Treasury (Cf. Jo. viii. 20), observing the worshippers as they passed and made their offerings. The rich swept by and ostentatiously cast in the large contributions which they could so easily afford (Cf. Mt. vi. 2); and for them He had no praise. But presently a worshipper of another sort timidly advanced— a poor woman, evidently known to Him. She was a widow, and it may be that He had encountered her [ p. 330 ] and comforted her sorrow during His recent ministry in the city. And now she had come with a thankoffering. In the world’s sight it was indeed a poor gift—only two lepta. A lepton , like our mite, was the smallest of copper coins. It was, as the Evangelist explains, half of a quadrans or farthing; and since it took sixty-four quadrantes to make a silver denarius , which was a day’s wage at that period, it was indeed a poor offering that the widow brought. But it was all she had, and when she had given it, her hand was empty. Little in the world’s sight, it was much to her, and it was much in the Lord’s sight. He saw not the poor gift but the sacrifice which it involved and the love which it expressed. “Verily I tell you,” said He to His disciples, “that this poor widow has contributed more than all the contributors to the Treasury. For they all contributed what they could well spare, while she contributed what she could ill afford—all that She had, her whole livelihood.”
Thus He “surveyed the scene” in the Templecourt, and then He would go forth into the city. He would revisit the scenes of His previous ministry and greet His friends; and at evening He quitted Jerusalem and “went out to Bethany with the Twelve.” It is not the village of Bethany that is here meant. The Holy City, “the place which the Lord had chosen to cause His name to dwell there,” (Dt. xvi. 1-8) was the scene of the paschal celebration. There at the altar in the court of the Temple must the lamb be slain, and there too within the walls of the city must the unleavened bread be baked ; but since there was insufficient accommodation within the narrow circuit for the multitude of worshippers, many perforce [ p. 331 ] lodged outside, and that the Law might be observed, all the western slope of Olivet as far as Bethphage was regarded as within the walls of the city and went by the name of Bethany. It would indeed have been most natural that the Lord should lodge with His friends in the neighbouring village of Bethany, but if Lazarus and Martha had been driven thence by the menace of the rulers’ wrath, their hospitable home was no longer open to Him; and the Evangelists have told us what His practice was during the Passionweek. “Each day,” says St. Luke, “He was teaching in the Temple, and each night He would go forth and bivouac on Mount Olivet.” (xxi. 37; xxi. 17) And St. Matthew means precisely the same when he says : “He went forth outside the city to Bethany, and bivouacked there.” (Mt. xxvi. 36; Mk. xiv. 32; Lk. xxii. 39; Jo. xviii. 2) His retreat was an olive orchard called Gethsemane or the Oil-press; and in that warm climate it was no hardship and no uncommon experience for Him and His disciples to pass the night wrapped in their mantles beneath the leafy trees.