The King Who Rode a Borrowed Donkey

Zechariah's Jerusalem had a temple going back up stone by stone, a high priest in a clean robe, and no king at all.

The last king from David's family had been marched off to Babylon long ago. Now God's people belonged to the empire of Persia, whose king lived far away in a palace and owned more chariots than anyone could count. The kings of that world went everywhere with war horses and archers, and every town on their road shook when it heard them coming. Jerusalem had broken walls and no army. The people could look out over the hills and see exactly who had the horses. It was never them.

Then God gave Zechariah a message, and it began with a shout.

"Rejoice, daughter of Zion! Shout, daughter of Jerusalem!" (That is a loving name for the city, as if the whole of Jerusalem were God's own girl.) "Look! Your King is coming to you. He is righteous, and he brings rescue."

A king! At last! Anyone listening would have pictured him already: a tall horse, a gleaming spear, chariots rumbling behind him like thunder.

"He is humble," God said, "and he is riding on a donkey, on a colt, a donkey's foal."

A donkey?

A war horse charges straight at the enemy. A donkey stops in the middle of the road to eat a thistle and will not move again until it is good and ready. No one has ever won a battle on a donkey.

But the people knew an old custom. A king rode a horse when he came to fight, and a donkey when he came in peace. King Solomon had ridden to his crowning on his father David's mule. This King was coming as a friend. (God did not say whose donkey it would be. That part would come later.)

Then God said what this King would do. "I will take away the chariots from Ephraim and the war horses from Jerusalem, and the battle bow will be broken."

(Ephraim and Jerusalem were God's own people. The horses God would take away were theirs.)

"He will speak peace to the nations. He will rule from sea to sea, from the great River to the ends of the earth."

A King with no army, on an animal that stops for thistles, who would end the fighting by speaking peace. And his kingdom would stretch farther than Persia's ever did.

Zechariah never saw that King. The rulers who did come to Jerusalem came on horses, Greek generals first and then Roman soldiers in iron helmets, and still the people read the scroll and watched the road.

Then one spring, a rider came down the Mount of Olives toward the city gate. He had sent two friends to borrow a young donkey that no one had ever ridden. "If anyone asks," he told them, "say the Lord needs it." The crowd threw their coats on the road and shouted for their King. He had no chariot, no war horse, and no bow. That same week soldiers nailed him to a cross and he died, and on the third day God raised him to life. Jesus made peace the upside-down way, by giving up his own life, and that peace is still going out to the ends of the earth.