donkeys

172:5.12Of all the apos­tles, Ju­das Is­car­iot was the most ad­versely af­fected by this pro­ces­sional en­try into Je­ru­sa­lem. His mind was in a dis­agree­able fer­ment be­cause of the Mas­ter’s re­buke the pre­ced­ing day in con­nec­tion with Mary’s anoint­ing at the feast in Si­mon’s house. Ju­das was dis­gusted with the whole spec­ta­cle. To him it seemed child­ish, if not in­deed ridicu­lous. As this venge­ful apos­tle looked upon the pro­ceed­ings of this Sun­day af­ter­noon, Je­sus seemed to him more to re­sem­ble a clown than a king. He heart­ily re­sented the whole per­for­mance. He shared the views of the Greeks and Ro­mans, who looked down upon any­one who would con­sent to ride upon an ass or the colt of an ass. By the time the tri­umphal pro­ces­sion had en­tered the city, Ju­das had about made up his mind to aban­don the whole idea of such a king­dom; he was al­most re­solved to for­sake all such far­ci­cal at­tempts to es­tab­lish the king­dom of heaven. And then he thought of the res­ur­rec­tion of Laz­a­rus, and many other things, and de­cided to stay on with the twelve, at least for an­other day. Be­sides, he car­ried the bag, and he would not desert with the apos­tolic funds in his pos­ses­sion. On the way back to Beth­any that night his con­duct did not seem strange since all of the apos­tles were equally down­cast and silent.

172:3.4Hav­ing de­cided upon mak­ing a pub­lic en­trance into Je­ru­sa­lem, the Mas­ter was con­fronted with the ne­ces­sity of choos­ing a proper method of ex­e­cut­ing such a re­solve. Je­sus thought over all of the many more or less con­tra­dic­tory so-called Mes­sianic prophe­cies, but there seemed to be only one which was at all ap­pro­pri­ate for him to fol­low. Most of these pro­phetic ut­ter­ances de­picted a king, the son and suc­ces­sor of David, a bold and ag­gres­sive tem­po­ral de­liv­erer of all Is­rael from the yoke of for­eign dom­i­na­tion. But there was one Scrip­ture that had some­times been as­so­ci­ated with the Mes­siah by those who held more to the spir­i­tual con­cept of his mis­sion, which Je­sus thought might con­sis­tently be taken as a guide for his pro­jected en­try into Je­ru­sa­lem. This Scrip­ture was found in Zechariah, and it said: “Re­joice greatly, O daugh­ter of Zion; shout, O daugh­ter of Je­ru­sa­lem. Be­hold, your king comes to you. He is just and he brings sal­va­tion. He comes as the lowly one, rid­ing upon an ass, upon a colt, the foal of an ass.”

172:3.5A war­rior king al­ways en­tered a city rid­ing upon a horse; a king on a mis­sion of peace and friend­ship al­ways en­tered rid­ing upon an ass. Je­sus would not en­ter Je­ru­sa­lem as a man on horse­back, but he was will­ing to en­ter peace­fully and with good will as the Son of Man on a don­key.

125:3.2The Naz­a­reth trav­el­ers did not miss Je­sus be­cause Mary sur­mised he jour­neyed with the men, while Joseph thought he trav­eled with the women since he had gone up to Je­ru­sa­lem with the women, lead­ing Mary’s don­key. They did not dis­cover his ab­sence un­til they reached Jeri­cho and pre­pared to tarry for the night. Af­ter mak­ing in­quiry of the last of the party to reach Jeri­cho and learn­ing that none of them had seen their son, they spent a sleep­less night, turn­ing over in their minds what might have hap­pened to him, re­count­ing many of his un­usual re­ac­tions to the events of Pass­over week, and mildly chid­ing each other for not see­ing to it that he was in the group be­fore they left Je­ru­sa­lem.

172:5.5John Zeb­e­dee came some­where near un­der­stand­ing why Je­sus did this; at least he grasped in part the spir­i­tual sig­nif­i­cance of this so-called tri­umphal en­try into Je­ru­sa­lem. As the mul­ti­tude moved on to­ward the tem­ple, and as John be­held his Mas­ter sit­ting there astride the colt, he re­called hear­ing Je­sus one­time quote the pas­sage of Scrip­ture, the ut­ter­ance of Zechariah, which de­scribed the com­ing of the Mes­siah as a man of peace and rid­ing into Je­ru­sa­lem on an ass. As John turned this Scrip­ture over in his mind, he be­gan to com­pre­hend the sym­bolic sig­nif­i­cance of this Sun­day-af­ter­noon pageant. At least, he grasped enough of the mean­ing of this Scrip­ture to en­able him some­what to en­joy the episode and to pre­vent his be­com­ing over­much de­pressed by the ap­par­ent pur­pose­less end­ing of the tri­umphal pro­ces­sion. John had a type of mind which nat­u­rally tended to think and feel in sym­bols.

172:5.8Mat­thew was at first non­plused by this pageant per­for­mance. He did not grasp the mean­ing of what his eyes were see­ing un­til he also re­called the Scrip­ture in Zechariah where the prophet had al­luded to the re­joic­ing of Je­ru­sa­lem be­cause her king had come bring­ing sal­va­tion and rid­ing upon the colt of an ass. As the pro­ces­sion moved in the di­rec­tion of the city and then drew on to­ward the tem­ple, Mat­thew be­came ec­static; he was cer­tain that some­thing ex­traor­di­nary would hap­pen when the Mas­ter ar­rived at the tem­ple at the head of this shout­ing mul­ti­tude. When one of the Phar­isees mocked Je­sus, say­ing, “Look, ev­ery­body, see who comes here, the king of the Jews rid­ing on an ass!” Mat­thew kept his hands off of him only by ex­er­cis­ing great re­straint. None of the twelve was more de­pressed on the way back to Beth­any that evening. Next to Si­mon Pe­ter and Si­mon Ze­lo­tes, he ex­pe­ri­enced the high­est ner­vous ten­sion and was in a state of ex­haus­tion by night. But by morn­ing Mat­thew was much cheered; he was, af­ter all, a cheer­ful loser.

122:7.4Joseph and Mary were poor, and since they had only one beast of bur­den, Mary, be­ing large with child, rode on the an­i­mal with the pro­vi­sions while Joseph walked, lead­ing the beast. The build­ing and fur­nish­ing of a home had been a great drain on Joseph since he had also to con­tribute to the sup­port of his par­ents, as his fa­ther had been re­cently dis­abled. And so this Jew­ish cou­ple went forth from their hum­ble home early on the morn­ing of Au­gust 18, 7 B.C., on their jour­ney to Beth­le­hem.

122:7.7The inn was over­crowded, and Joseph ac­cord­ingly sought lodg­ings with dis­tant rel­a­tives, but ev­ery room in Beth­le­hem was filled to over­flow­ing. On re­turn­ing to the court­yard of the inn, he was in­formed that the car­a­van sta­bles, hewn out of the side of the rock and sit­u­ated just be­low the inn, had been cleared of an­i­mals and cleaned up for the re­cep­tion of lodgers. Leav­ing the don­key in the court­yard, Joseph shoul­dered their bags of cloth­ing and pro­vi­sions and with Mary de­scended the stone steps to their lodg­ings be­low. They found them­selves lo­cated in what had been a grain stor­age room to the front of the stalls and mangers. Tent cur­tains had been hung, and they counted them­selves for­tu­nate to have such com­fort­able quar­ters.