Chapter 19
Jesus enters the city of Jericho, and a crowd looks on as he passes through the gates. A chief tax collector named Zacchaeus is among the crowd, but he’s a short man and can’t see over the other people. He runs ahead of Jesus’ procession and climbs a tree, so that he’ll have a good view when Jesus passes by. When Jesus reaches that place in the road, he spots Zacchaeus and tells him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” Zacchaeus hops down happily. The onlooking crowd starts muttering among themselves that Jesus will be the guest of a sinner, a tax collector. Zacchaeus tells Jesus, “Look Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.” Jesus replies that “today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.”
Much of the crowd expects the kingdom of God to arrive any day now. Jesus tells them a parable: A man is going to another country to be declared king there. Before he leaves, he calls ten of his servants and gives them ten coins, one coin apiece. He tells them to “put the money to work” until he gets back. He goes to the other country, but his subjects there hate him and don’t want him. He gets declared king anyway, though. When he returns home, the first servant has taken the coin he was given and used it to earn ten more. The master is pleased and says that because he has been trustworthy in a small matter, he will be entrusted with a larger matter. He puts the servant in charge of ten cities. The next servant says he has taken the master’s coin and used it to earn five more coins. The master is pleased, and puts the servant in charge of five cities. The next servant says that he has done nothing with his coin – he took it and hid it to keep it safe, because he was afraid of the master’s sternness. The master gets angry, and tells the servant he will judge him with his own words: if the servant believed the master was stern, why didn’t he act accordingly? Why didn’t he deposit the coin, so that he could earn the interest? The master orders the other servants to take that servant’s coin away from him, and give it to the one who had ten coins. They protest that the other guy already has a lot of coins. The master replies that “to everyone who has, more will be given, but as for the one who has nothing, even what he has will be taken away. But those enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them – bring them here and kill them in front of me.” (cf Matthew 25)
After leaving Jericho, Jesus heads to Jerusalem. They get to the villages of Bethphage and Bethany, on the Mount of Olives outside Jerusalem. Pausing there, he sends two of his disciples to the village ahead. He says they will find a colt, that has never been ridden, tied up in the village, and they are to take it and bring it to Jesus. If anyone questions them about it, they are to say that the Lord needs it. The disciples go to the village and find the colt just like Jesus had said. Some townspeople ask them what they’re doing, and just as instructed they say that the Lord needs the colt. They bring it back to Jesus and put their cloaks over its back for Jesus to sit on, and then they all continue down the road and into Jerusalem. (Matthew 21, Mark 11)
As they go down the road, people gather along the roadsides, and spread their cloaks on the road in front of Jesus as if he were royalty. The crowd starts to sing praises to God for all the miracles they’ve seen Jesus do. Some Pharisees are watching, and tell Jesus to rebuke his disciples for saying that Jesus is a “king who comes in the name of the Lord”. Jesus states that if the people kept quiet, even the very stones would cry out. Jesus weeps when he sees the city of Jerusalem. He tells the Pharisees that if only they had known what would bring them peace on this day… but alas, it is hidden from them. Soon, they will be surrounded by their enemies, encircled by enemy embankments and destroyed, all because they didn’t recognize the time of God’s coming. (Matthew 21, Mark 11)
Jesus then enters the temple area. It’s full of people selling stuff, and Jesus throws them all out, saying that they have turned the house of the Lord into a den of robbers. Every day after that, he comes to teach at the temple, and the people hang on his every word. The Pharisees and chief priests hate him, but can’t do anything to him because he is too popular. (Matthew 21, Mark 11)
Commentary
Re: Zacchaeus. According to the notes, the law said that the repayment for theft was 4 times the amount stolen, hence Zacchaeus’ promise. The notes say that Jericho was pretty rich, so it would have been easy pickings for Zack to get rich off cheating people, which was what most tax-collectors did in those days, hence their unpopularity.
Re: “But those enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them – bring them here and kill them in front of me.” Yowza. The king in the story pretty obviously represents Jesus, who leaves his followers behind to go become King, i.e. to be crucified and resurrected. The coins apparently represents faith, and the servants are supposed to take what small amount faith they have and parlay it into larger and stronger faith. The ones who do this get rewarded with responsibility in the king’s kingdom. The one who didn’t even try is punished by losing even the small amount of faith he started out with. As far as the other servants who were ordered to take the one guy’s coin away from him and give to the ten-coin guy, I was right there with them thinking, “What’s the deal, dude has ten coins already. Why does he need eleven?” I have to say I don’t really get that part. Then the violence at the end, like whoa. When did Jesus get vengeful? According to the notes, this is supposed to be an elliptical prophecy of the upcoming destruction of Jerusalem in 70AD. Jerusalem is where Jesus was crucified, so I guess that could make sense. Still sounds pretty vengeful, though.
Re: the colt. Luke’s bare-bones version of the story here makes it sound like the disciples are almost stealing the colt, but in Mark’s more fleshed-out account of the event, he makes it clear that the townspeople let them take it. In Matthew’s version of the story, the disciples took both the colt, as well as the colt’s mother, a donkey. Matthew would almost definitely have been present at the actual event, being an apostle. Mark would most likely been there, too; he was a lower-level follower, but was trusted enough that Jesus had him with him at Gethsemane before being arrested, so it’s probable that he would have been with Jesus during his entrance to Jerusalem as well. So, it’s basically a toss-up as to which account to believe. Most likely, the disciples took both the donkey and the colt like Matthew said, and the other gospel writers simply left the donkey out of the story during their retellings because it has zero importance to the plot line. Luke would not have been present at this event at all, as he was a late-comer who didn’t follow Jesus until after Jesus’ death and resurrection; he basically just copies here. He either copied Matthew’s account and left out the part about the donkey, or he copied Mark’s account and super-summarized it to leave out the part about the villagers letting them have the colt when they asked.
Re: the Pharisees being encircled and embanked and such. This is supposed to be another prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem. According to wiki, the Romans besieged the city and built a wall around it, although it doesn’t say anything about embankments. Wikipedia isn’t exactly the best source ever, though. The Romans certainly encircled and destroyed the place.
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