Matthew 21:5

5. Tell ye the daughter of Zion This is a memorable prophecy of the Messiah in his humble and peaceful character. It is thus translated from the Hebrew by Hengstenberg: “Rejoice greatly, thou daughter of Zion! shout for joy, thou daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, thy king comes to thee; he is just and protected of God, afflicted and riding upon a foal the son of an ass.” The prophecy of the entire preceding part of the ninth chapter of Zechariah, Hengstenberg holds to be a clear prediction of the conquests of Alexander the Great. But with these words at the ninth verse commences, in contrast, the descriptive picture of Jesus the Prince of peace. It was applied by the ancient Jews to the Messiah.

Daughter of Zion The pious part of the Jewish people. And a colt the foal of an ass Strauss and ether objectors have maintained that this is simply a Hebrew parallelism, in which the last clause is but an echo of the former, both possessing the same meaning. Thereby the colt foal in the last clause would be the same as the ass in the first clause, both being terms for one and the same animal. But Hengstenberg justly denies that by the laws of Hebrew parallelism the two would necessarily mean the same individual animal. In the passage Genesis 49:11: “Binding his foal unto the vine, his ass’s colt unto the choice vine,” no one would claim that the foal and the colt were necessarily the same individual. In the present case it was our Lord’s purpose to make his procession with both animals into Jerusalem a sort of visible embodiment of the prophet’s words. Nor must this voluntary act upon the part of our Lord be looked upon as being a literal and final fulfilment of the prophecy. The prophet does not by these words intend to describe this or any particular scene. He only takes the riding upon the ass as the image to illustrate the meekness of the Messianic King. And our Lord, in thus acting the image of the prophet in visible form, does call the attention of the Jewish nation to his claim to be the King predicted by this prophetic image. This our Saviour performed at the passover, when the Jewish nation was, by representatives, present to behold; when perhaps millions of the nation were actually present to bear the news to all parts of the land.