Mark 11:3

11:1-11 Christ's coming into Jerusalem thus remarkably, shows that he was not afraid of the power and malice of his enemies. This would encourage his disciples who were full of fear. Also, that he was not disquieted at the thoughts of his approaching sufferings. But all marked his humiliation; and these matters teach us not to mind high things, but to condescend to those of low estate. How ill it becomes Christians to take state, when Christ was so far from claiming it! They welcomed his person; Blessed is he that cometh, the He that should come, so often promised, so long expected; he comes in the name of the Lord. Let him have our best affections; he is a blessed Saviour, and brings blessings to us, and blessed be He that sent him. Praises be to our God, who is in the highest heavens, over all, God blessed for ever.

Mark 11:3 . ὁ κύριος α . χ . ἔχει , the Master hath need of him. Vide on this at Matthew 21:3 .— καὶ εὐθὺς , etc., and straightway He returneth him (the colt) again.— πάλιν , a well-attested reading, clearly implies this meaning, i.e. , that Jesus bids His disciples promise the owner that He will return the colt without delay, after He has had His use of it. So without hesitation Weiss (in Meyer) and Holtzmann (H. C.). Meyer thinks this a paltry thing for Christ to say, and rejects πάλιν as an addition due to misunderstanding. Biassed by the same sense of decorum—“below the dignity of the occasion and of the Speaker”—the Speaker’s Comm. cherishes doubt as to πάλιν , sheltering itself behind the facts that, while the MSS. which insert “again” are generally more remarkable for omissions than additions, yet in this instance they lack the support of ancient versions and early Fathers. I do not feel the force of the argument from decorum. It judges Christ’s action by a conventional standard. Why should not Jesus instruct His disciples to say “it will be returned without delay” as an inducement to lend it? Dignity! How much will have to go if that is to be the test of historicity! There was not only dignity but humiliation in the manner of entering Jerusalem: the need for the colt, the use of it, the fact that it had to be borrowed all enter as elements in the lowly state of the Son of Man. On the whole subject vide notes on Mt.

3 . the Lord hath need of him ] The words suggest that the man may have been a secret disciple. “Secret disciples, such as the five hundred who afterwards gathered to one spot in Galilee, and the hundred and twenty who met after the resurrection ( 1 Corinthians 15:6 ; Acts 1:15 ), were scattered in many places.”

Verse 3. - And if any one say unto you, Why do ye this? say ye, The Lord hath need of him; and straightway he will send him back hither . The Greek, according to the best authorities here, is εὐθέως αὐτὸν ἀποστελλει πάλιν ῶδε : literally, straightway he sendeth it back hither again , The verb here in the present may represent the verb in the future, "he will send it back." But the word "again" ( πάλιν ) is not quite so easily explained. There is strong authority for the insertion of this word, which necessarily changes the meaning of the sentence. Without the πάλιν , the sentence would actually mean that our Lord, by his Divine prescience, here tells his disciples that when the colt was demanded by them the owner would at once permit them to take it. But if the word πάλιν be inserted, it can only mean that this was a part of the message which our Lord directed his disciples to deliver as from himself, "The Lord hath need of him; and he, the Lord, will forthwith send him back again." The passage is so interpreted by Origen, who twice introduces the adverb in his commentary on St. Matthew. The evidence of the oldest uncials is strongly in favor of this insertion.

Our Lord was unwilling that the disciples should take away the colt if the owner objected, lie might have taken the animals away in his own supreme right, but he chose to accomplish his will by his providence, powerfully and yet gently; and, if the reading here be allowed, he further influenced them by the promise that their property should be returned to them. It was the will and purpose of Christ, who for these three years had gone about on foot, and traveled over the whole of Palestine in this way, to show himself at length the King of Judah, that is, the Messiah and Heir of David; and so he resolves to enter Jerusalem, the metropolis, the city of the great King, with royal dignity. But he will not be surrounded with the" pomp and circumstance" of an earthly monarch. He rides on an ass's colt, that he might show his kingdom to be of another kind, that is, spiritual and heavenly. And so he assumes a humble equipage, riding upon a colt, his only housings being the clothes of his disciples. And yet there was dignity as well as humility in his equipage. The ass of the East was, and is, a superior animal to that known amongst us. The judges and princes of Israel rode on "white asses," and their sons on asses' colts. So our Lord rode upon an ass's colt; and there were no gleaming swords in his procession, or other signs of strife and bloodshed. But there were palm branches and garments spread all along his path - the evidences of devotion to him.

Ver. 3-6. See Poole on "Matthew 21:3" , &c. All along the story of our Saviour’s life and actions we shall find certain indications of his Divine power and virtue: his knowing men’s thoughts, and declarations of such his knowledge to them: his certain prediction of future contingencies, being able to tell persons such particulars as no man could know. How could he who was not God have told the disciples, that at their entrance into the village they should find a colt on which never man sat, that the owners would not resist strangers to take it away? Yet notwithstanding all this disciples very imperfectly believed him to be so, until he was risen from the dead. The time was not yet come when Christ would have this published, and till he gave them a power to believe it, i.e. to have a full persuasion of it, all these moral arguments were not sufficient to work in their hearts a full persuasion. The faith of the Christians of that time seemeth to have had these three gradations: 1. They believed him a great Prophet, that had received great power from God. 2. They owned him as the Messiah, as the Son of David, and now and then they would drop some expressions arguing some persuasions that he was the Son of God. 3. Last of all, they came to a firm persuasion that he was truly God, as well as man, after that he was risen from the dead, and declared with power to be such, as the apostle saith. Yet what means imaginable could they have had more than, 1.

A voice from heaven declaring it. 2. The Spirit descending in a visible shape. 3. The great miracles he had wrought by sea and land, commanding the winds and the waves, healing incurable diseases and all others in an instant without use of rational means, raising the dead, &c. 4. His telling their thoughts, foretelling future contingencies, &c. Yet all these produced in the generality of the people no more than amazement and astonishment; and in the apostles themselves, rather a disposition to such a faith, or an opinion or suspicion of such a thing, than a firm and fixed persuasion concerning it.