The prophecies of Zechariah are among the most difficult in the Bible. It’s not only that Zechariah is so rich in imagery and symbols; it’s a strange mixture of the past and the future—an odd mixture of events in history, of people, personages, places, things that happened…and of things that never happened then, but are going to happen before man’s age is finished.
There’s absolutely no doubt that some of Zechariah has been fulfilled in history. It is just as certain that much of it is prophetic; and I was debating with myself as to whether more of it is future or whether more of it is past, and I think I have come down on the side of more of it is future. Some of it is prophetic to the coming of the Messiah. Some of it looks all the way to the Millennium. And right in the middle of this difficult prophecy is a prophecy of a great king to come. But, oddly, it is not what we would expect to hear about a great king. He says,
Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, your King comes to you: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding on an ass, and on a colt the foal of an ass.
Zechariah 9:9
This is not what one would expect. A king, you would think, would ride into town on a chariot. A king would ride in on a chariot with someone holding a laurel over his head and with crowds of people praising him. Or maybe he would come in on a horse; but of course, in the Bible, horses and chariots are the cavalry—they are instruments of war. They are the tanks and the Bradley Fighting Vehicles of that age. They are war-making instruments.
And the Hebrew word for lowly [ani, עָנִי, Strong’s h6041] means, basically, poor, needy, and in depressed circumstances. Not exactly the sort of thing you would ever think would in any way represent a king. Here is the Messiah, here is the Savior, here is the one who is coming to save his people.
[…] when they drew near to Jerusalem, and were come to Bethphage, to the mount of Olives, then sent Jesus two disciples, saying to them, Go into the village over against you, and straightway you shall find an ass tied, and a colt with her: loose them, and bring them to me. And if any man say ought to you, you shall say, The Lord has need of them; and straightway he will send them. All this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, Tell you the daughter of Sion, Behold, your King comes to you, meek, and sitting on an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass.
Matthew 21:1–5
Right in the middle of Zechariah, this prophecy is found; and Jesus fulfills this prophecy in his (if you want to call it) triumphal entry into Jerusalem, where the people who are praising him are children, and the things that they’re laying out in front of him on the road as he goes through are palm fronds.
And so, what does all this mean? Why is it that the king, when he comes, why is it that the Messiah, when he comes, is coming lowly? And I can’t imagine, frankly, how the first readers took Zechariah. For indeed, the expectations of a messiah were there, but the expectations generally were of a restoration of the Kingdom of Israel. The restoration was, We’re going to throw the Romans out. We’ll do what the Maccabees failed to do; we will actually succeed in establishing once again the Kingdom of Israel. What did they think when they read Zechariah? And your king is going to be just, and he’ll have salvation, and he’ll ride into town lowly—riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass. All of this must’ve seemed very, very strange to people long ago. I think it even seemed strange to Jesus’ own disciples when he did it.
But this was prophesied long before this by Isaiah. And Isaiah is another prophet whose work is convoluted, and kind of confusing in a way, and a little hard to follow. It’s a strange admixture of history and prophecy, of the past and of the future. We’ll begin in chaper 9, verse 1...
