CRITICAL NOTES
Luke 19:28. Went before.—I.e., at the head of the disciples. Cf. Mark 10:32. Ascending.—The road from Jericho to Jerusalem is one long ascent.
Luke 19:29. Bethphage.—A village apparently on the east of Bethany. The name means “house of figs.” The place itself has not been identified. It is mentioned in the Talmud. Bethany.—The home of Lazarus and his sisters. It lies on the eastern slope of the Mount of Olives, fully a mile beyond the summit, and not very far from the point at which the road to Jericho begins its more sudden descent towards the Jordan valley” (Smith, “Dictionary of the Bible”).
Luke 19:30. A colt.—The more circumstantial account in St, Matthew speaks of a mother and her colt. The Saviour rode upon the colt while the mother was led beside it, after the manner of a sumpter. Never man sat.—And therefore sent for a sacred purpose. Cf. Numbers 19:2; Deuteronomy 21:3; 1 Samuel 6:7.
Luke 19:35. Cast their garments.—As in honour of a king (cf. 2 Kings 9:13).
Luke 19:36. In the way.—As also leaves of trees and palm-branches.
Luke 19:37. And when He was.—St. Luke alone indicates the point at which the popular enthusiasm began to manifest itself. “Bethany is hardly left in the rear before the long procession must have swept up and over the ridge, where first begins ‘the descent of the Mount of Olives’ towards Jerusalem. At this point the first view is caught of the southeastern corner of the city. The Temple and the more northern portions are hid by the slope of Olivet on the right. It was at this precise point, ‘as He drew near, at the descent of the Mount of Olives’—may it not have been from the sight thus opening upon them?—that the hymn of triumph burst forth from the multitude” (Stanley, “Sinai and Palestine”). St. John speaks of a company going out from the city to meet the procession (Luke 12:18), and explains that the enthusiasm was principally excited by the raising of Lazarus from the dead.
Luke 19:38. Peace in heaven.—I.e., between God and man; and on this account “glory [to God] in the highest.”
Luke 19:40. If these, etc.—Rather, “if these shall hold their peace, the stones will cry out” (R.V.). The words are of a proverbial character; they recall, too, Habakkuk 2:11.
Luke 19:41. And when.—“The road descends a slight declivity, and the glimpse of the city is again withdrawn behind the intervening ridge of Olivet. A few moments, and the path mounts again; it climbs a rugged ascent, it reaches a ledge of smooth rock, and in an instant the whole city bursts into view. Immediately below was the valley of the Kedron, here seen in its greatest depth as it joins the Valley of Hinnom, and thus giving full effect to the great peculiarity of Jerusalem seen only on its eastern side—its situation as of a city rising out of a deep abyss. It is hardly possible to doubt that this rise and turn of the road, this rocky ledge, was the exact point where the multitude paused again, and ‘He, when He beheld the city, wept over it’ ” (Stanley, “Sinai and Palestine”). Wept.—The word implies “wept aloud.”
Luke 19:42. Even thou.—I.e., as well as the disciples. In this thy day.—Rather, “in this day” (R.V.).
Luke 19:43. Cast a trench.—Rather, “cast up a bank” (R.V.); strictly speaking, “a palisade,” It and a wall of masonry were afterwards used by Titus in investing the city.
Luke 19:44. Thy children.—Not merely infants, but the inhabitants generally. The city is personified as a mother. Visitation.—I.e., season of grace. Cf. Genesis 1:24; Exodus 4:31, etc.
Luke 19:45. Into the temple.—This is a second purification of the Temple, the first being recorded in John 2:13-17. Sold therein.—I.e., doves, sheep, cattle, for use in sacrifice.
Luke 19:46. It is written.— Isaiah 56:7. Den of thieves.—Rather, “den of robbers” (R.V.).
Luke 19:48. Were very attentive.—Rather, “the people all hung upon Him, listening” (R.V.).
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Luke 19:28-48
A New Kind of King.—St. Luke takes no notice of the stay at Bethany, and the sweet seclusion which soothed Jesus there. He dwells only on the assertion of royalty, which stamped an altogether unique character on the remaining hours of Christ’s life.
I. Christ’s part in originating the triumphal entry.—He sent for the colt, with the obvious intention of stimulating the people to just such a demonstration as followed. Note the remarkable blending of dignity and poverty in “The Lord hath need of him.” It asserts sovereign authority and absolute rights, and it confesses need and penury. He is a king, but He has to borrow even a colt on which to ride in triumph. Though He was rich, for our sakes He became poor. Jesus then deliberately brought about His public entry. He thereby acts in a way perfectly unlike His whole previous course. And He stirs up popular feelings at a time when they were specially sensitive, by reason of the approaching Passover and its crowds. Formerly He had avoided the danger which He now seems to court, and had gone up to the feast, as it were, in secret. But it was fitting that once, for the last time, He should assert before the gathered Israel that He was their King, and should make a last appeal. He deliberately makes Himself conspicuous, though—or we might say because—He knew that thereby He precipitated His death. The nature of His dominion is as plainly taught by the humble pomp as is its reality. Gentleness and peace, a sway that rests not on force nor wealth, are shadowed in that rustic procession and the pathetic poverty of its leader, throned on a borrowed colt, and attended, not by warriors or dignitaries, but by poor men, unarmed, and saluted, not with the blare of trumpets, but with the shouts of joyful, though, alas! fickle hearts.
II. The humble procession, with the shouting and the background of hostile spies.—The disciples eagerly caught at the meaning of bringing the colt, and threw themselves with alacrity into what seemed to them preparation for the public assertion of royalty, for which they had long been impatient. How different the vision of the future in their minds and His! They dreamed of a throne; He knew it was a cross that was in store for Him. They broke into loud acclamations, summoning, as it were, Jerusalem to welcome its King. Christ’s royalty and Divine commission are proclaimed from a thousand throats, and then up swells the shout of praise, which echoes the angels’ song at Bethlehem, and ascribes to His coming power to make peace in heaven with an else alienated world, and thus to make the Divine glory blaze with new splendour, even in the highest heavens; their song was wiser than they knew, and touched the deepest, mysteries of the unity of the Son with the Father, of reconciliation by the blood of the cross, and of new lustre accruing to God’s name thereby, even in the sight of principalities and powers in heavenly places. Their shouts died away, and their faith was almost as short-lived. High-wrought emotion is a poor substitute for steady conviction. But cool, unemotional recognition of Christ as King is almost as unnatural. There were cool observers there, and they make the foil to the glad enthusiasm. Note that these Pharisees, mingling in the crowd, have no title for Jesus but “Teacher.” He is no King to them. To those who regard Jesus but as a human teacher, the acclamations of those to whom He is King and Lord always sound exaggerated. People with no depth of religious life hate religious emotion, and are always seeking to repress it. A very tepid worship is warm enough for them. Formalists detest genuine feeling. Propriety is their ideal. Christ’s answer is probably a quoted proverb. It implies His entire acceptance of the character which the crowd ascribed to Him, His pleasure in their praises, and, in a wider aspect, His vindication of outbursts of devout feeling, which shock ecclesiastical martinets and formalists.
III. The King plunged in bitter grief in the very hour of His triumph.—The fair city brings before His vision the awful contrast of its lying compassed by armies and in ruins. He hears not the acclamation of the crowd. “He wept,” or, rather, “wailed”—for the word does not imply tears so much as cries. That sorrow is a sign of His real manhood, but it is also a part of His revelation of the very heart of God. The form is human, the substance Divine. The man weeps because God pities. Christ’s sorrow does not hinder His judgments. The woes which wring His heart will, nevertheless, be inflicted by Him. Judgment is His “strange work,” alien from His desires; but it is His work. Note the yearning in the unfinished sentence. “If thou hadst known.” Note the decisive closing of the time of repentance. Note the minute prophetic details of the siege, which, if ever they were spoken, are a distinct proof of His all-seeing eye. And from all let us fix in our hearts the conviction of the pity of the judge, and of the judgment by the pitying Christ.
IV. Christ’s exercise of sovereign authority in His Father’s house.—Two things are brought out in the compressed narrative.
1. The fact. It was fitting that, at the end of His career, as at the beginning, He should cleanse the Temple. The two events are significant as His first and last acts. The second one, as we gather from the other evangelists, had a greater severity about it than the first. The need for a second purifying indicated how sadly transient had been the effect of the first, and was thus evidence of the depth of corruption and formalism to which the religion of priests and people had sunk.
2. His vindication of His action. It is in right royal style. The first cleansing was defended by Him by pointing to the sanctity of “My Father’s house”; the second by claiming it as “My house.” The rebuke of the hucksters is sterner the second time. The profanation, once driven out, and returning, is deeper; for whereas, in the first instance, it had made the Temple a “house of merchandise,” in the second it turned it into a “den of robbers.” Thus evil assumes a darker tint by lapse of time, and swiftly becomes worse if rebuked and chastised in vain. We see here
(1) Christ’s calm courage in continuous teaching in the Temple;
(2) the growing hatred of the authorities; and
(3) the eager hanging of the people on His words, which baffled the murderous designs of the rulers. Meekly and boldly He goes on the appointed way. The day’s task of winning some from impending ruin shall still be done. So should His servants live, in patient discharge of daily duty, in the face of death, if need be. The enemies, who heard His words and found in them only food for deeper hatred, may warn us of the possibilities of antagonism to Him that lie in the heart, and of the terrible judgment which they drag down on their own heads, who hear, unmoved, His daily teaching, and see, unrepentant, His dying love.—Maclaren.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON Luke 19:28-48
Luke 19:28-44. The Triumphal Entry of Jesus into Jerusalem.
I. The preparations for it (Luke 19:28-36).
II. The entry itself (Luke 19:37-38).
III. The murmurs of the Pharisees (Luke 19:39-40).
IV. The lamentation over the city (Luke 19:41-44).
Luke 19:28. “Had thus spoken.”—And when He had thus spoken, had thus judicially, in His own revealed royal person, decreed the destruction of His foes, He went onward to Jerusalem, there to deliver Himself up as the Paschal Lamb into their hands.—Stier.
Luke 19:29. “Sent two of His disciples.”—The sending of the two disciples is an indication of the deliberate purpose of Jesus to give special solemnity to this scene. Hitherto He had withdrawn Himself from popular homage; but He wished to be proclaimed once at least as Messiah and King in the midst of His people (Luke 19:40). This was the moment of manifestation so impatiently desired by His brethren (John 7:3-4), and was also a last appeal to the population of Jerusalem (Luke 19:42). There was nothing in this course of action to compromise His work, for He well knew that His life was drawing near to an end (Luke 13:32-33). He therefore allowed free course to the enthusiasm of the multitude; He even provokes the manifestation which follows, while He gave to it a more peaceful and humble character than it might have assumed.—Godet.
Luke 19:30. “Never man sat.”—Humble as were the arrangements for this triumphal entry into Jerusalem, a royal dignity is manifested in the spirit in which they were made. The animal chosen to carry the Saviour was to be one which had never before been used on any common occasion.
Luke 19:31. “The Lord hath need.”—These words seem to imply that Jesus knew the persons to whom the disciples were sent—that they were friends or disciples. Perhaps in this incidental allusion we have another indication of previous visits paid by Jesus to Jerusalem.
Luke 19:32. “Found even as He had said.”—Prophetical fore-knowledge rather than omniscience seems to be indicated by the action of Jesus on this occasion.
Luke 19:35-36. Jesus Claims and Receives Homage.—Jesus virtually claimed homage, and His disciples responded to Him by paying it. They might, no doubt, easily have procured ordinary trappings for the animal on which He rode, but they chose to prove their desire to consecrate themselves and their possessions to His service by making use of their own garments. Jesus, by accepting their homage, asserted His royal dignity, and by the humble circumstance of His triumph, as arranged by Him, proclaimed that His kingdom was not one of this world.
I. The joy of the disciples and of the multitude on coming in sight of the city.
II. The grief of Jesus at the same moment.
I. The purpose Christ developed.—He came to teach, to heal, to exemplify a sublime character, to offer an expiatory sacrifice, to manifest His Kingship.
II. The homage Christ received.
III. The sorrow Christ felt.
IV. The kingly duty Christ fulfilled.—Palmer.
Luke 19:37. “Began to rejoice.”—Once mounted on the ass, Jesus became the centre of the procession, visible to all, and the scene began more and more to assume an exceptional character. It is as if a breath from on high, a precursor of that of Pentecost, had moved the populace. The sight of the city, and of the Temple, which at this very point appeared in all their beauty, contributed to the outburst of joy and hope which came so suddenly. All hearts recalled at this moment the miracles which had marked the career of this extraordinary Man—miracles which been so numerous as almost to have exhausted the sense of wonder.—Godet.
I. The character in which Jesus is to be received.—“The King that cometh in the name of the Lord.”
II. The happy results anticipated from His reign.—
1. “Peace in heaven—i.e., peace re-established between heaven and earth.
2. “Glory in the highest”—fresh and more wonderful manifestations than had been given before of God’s gracious character and of His majesty and power.
Luke 19:39. “Some of the Pharisees.”—They cannot in any sense have been disciples of Jesus. Their spirit was exactly like that of modern Socianism; they objected to prophetical expressions being used and lofty epithets being applied to one whom they regarded as merely a teacher.
“Rebuke Thy disciples.”—The Pharisees had, for the time, lost the power of silencing the acclamations of the people, and so they have recurrence to Jesus himself. They were offended that He accepted recognition as the Messiah, and perhaps were even afraid of the enthusiasm of the populace leading to a seditious outbreak against the Roman authorities.”
Luke 19:40. “The stones will immediately cry out.”—Hitherto the Lord had discouraged all demonstrations in His favour; latterly He had begun an opposite course. On this one occasion He seems to yield His whole soul to the wide and deep acclaim with a mysterious satisfaction, regarding it as so necessary a part of the regal dignity in which, as Messiah, He, for the last time, entered the city, that, if not offered by the vast multitude, it would have been wrung out of the stones rather than be withheld.—Brown.
Luke 19:41-42. The Tears of Christ over the Indifference of Men.
I. Spiritual indifference was the sign of concealed ruin.—
1. Indifference conceals from men the downward progress of the soul’s life.
2. It, at the same time, hides the Christ who alone can save.
II. In spiritual indifference Christ saw a self-wrought ruin.
III. In spiritual indifference He saw ruin rapidly becoming hopeless.—Hull.
I. The tears and words of Christ are the tears and words of a true patriot.
II. He lamented the destruction of Jerusalem as a theocratic kingdom—as a Church.
III. Jerusalem was a home of souls—a hive of living men and women—whose rejection of Him involved overthrow and ruin.—Liddon.
Luke 19:41. “Wept over it.”—The words just spoken by the Pharisees displayed that obstinate resistance to Him which involved the ultimate ruin and overthrow of the city and nation. The contrast between what was and what might have been, was so great that He could not refrain from lamentation.
Luke 19:42. “Even thou.”—Or, “thou also,” i.e., “thou, as well as the humble crowd of disciples now forming the procession.”
“Thy peace.”—Probably an allusion to the meaning of the name Jerusalem—the “city of peace.”
“Belong unto thy peace.”—Acceptance of the sovereignty of Jesus would have meant laying aside that worldly and rebellious spirit which brought about the ruin of the nation.
Luke 19:43. “Cast a trench.”—Cf. Isaiah 29:3: “And I will encamp against thee round about, and will lay siege against thee with a mount, and I will raise forts against thee.”
Luke 19:44. I. The visitation of Jerusalem by Christ our Lord was unobtrusive.
II. The visitation of Jerusalem was final. Our Lord’s words account
(1) for the decay and ruin of nations;
(2) for the decay and fall of churches;
(3) for the decay of seats of learning;
(4) for loss in the individual life, when manifest warnings and visitations are neglected.—Liddon.
Visitation.—God’s visitations are connected in Holy Scripture with various motives.
I. The common use of the word associates it with judgment; with the judicial infliction of punishment of some sort (Psalms 89:32; Numbers 16:29).
II. But Divine visitations are often connected with a purpose of blessing (Genesis 21:1; 1 Samuel 2:21).
III. Visitation sometimes, too, means warning—a meaning intermediate between that of blessing and judgment (Psalms 17:3; Job 10:12). It is in this sense that our Lord describes His own ministry as the visitation of Jerusalem. It was partly a visitation of judgment, as our Lord judged the scribes and priests and Pharisees, though His judgment was not final. Yet more was it a visitation of blessing; it brought with it instruction, grace, and pardon. Failure to know the time of a visitation is followed by grave consequences, because
(1) it implies a culpable deadness of spiritual interest, and
(2) an equally blame-worthy pre-occupation with some other more engrossing interest.—Liddon.
Luke 19:45. “Began to cast out.”—From the parallel passage in St. Mark we learn that the cleansing of the Temple did not take place on the day of the triumphal entry. On that day Jesus entered the Temple and looked round about upon all that was passing in it (Mark 11:11). On the following day He purified it from the abuses which had sprung up in it, and which had not been effectually checked by His first act of cleansing (John 2:15).
Luke 19:46. “My house,” etc.—In the reply of Jesus there are quotations from two passages in the prophets— Isaiah 56:7 and Jeremiah 7:11.
Luke 19:47. “The chief priests,” etc.—Three classes of persons were roused to opposition:
I. The chief priests, whose neglect of the Temple was reproved by the action of Jesus, and whose gains were diminished by the suppression of the traffic.
II. The scribes, who were envious of the fame and influence He acquired by His teaching.
III. The “chief of the people,” or the wealthy classes, who were for the most part attached to the Sadducean party, and afraid of the effects of any patriotic movement. From this point the Pharisees, who must have approved of the cleansing of the Temple, cease to be the most prominent persecutors of Jesus.
Luke 19:48. “Very attentive.”—Rather, “hung upon Him.” Hung upon Him, as the bee doth on the flower, the babe on the breast, the little bird on the bill of her dam. Christ drew the people after Him by the golden chain of His heavenly eloquence.—J. Trapp.