Mark 11:2 - Exposition

Go your way into the village that is over against you. The village over against them would most likely be Beth-phage, towards which they were then approaching . Straightway as ye enter into it, ye shall find a colt tied, whereon no man ever yet sat. St. Mark mentions only the colt. St. Matthew mentions the ass and the colt. But St. Mark singles out the colt as that which our Lord specially needed; the mother of the animal accompanying it as a sumpter. Animals which had never before been used were alone admissible for sacred purposes. We read in Numbers ( Numbers 19:2 ) of "the heifer on which never came yoke." Our Lord here beholds things absent and out of sight, as though they were present. So that he revealed this to his disciples by the gift of prophecy which his divinity added to his humanity. Here, therefore, is a manifest proof of his divinity. It was by the same Divine power that he revealed to Nathanael what had taken place under the fig tree.