Zechariah 9:9 Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout, Daughter Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
The verse above is a shocker if you compare the Lord's entry into Jerusalem to every cavalry army in history. I checked Google to see if a single general had ridden these pint sized equines into battle, or in the old days, into capitol cities following victory. Hannibal did not, nor did Darius 1. No, donkeys brayed their way at the rear of his army, their hee haws so thoroughly upsetting the horses of his enemy, the Scythians, that he was able to retreat in safety. The short grayish animal never once supported a triumphant general or king into his capitol city.
I remember the movie with Burt Reynolds and Jim Brown, 100 Rifles, in which the Mexican Cavalry captain won't even ride his great Apaloosa horse until the road he's traversed in the relative leather comfort of an early car just disappears. Then he mounts the steed and canters into the small village where he is ruling in arrogant display.
No, donkeys are surely utilized for centuries as pack animals, but nary a ruler has ridden them either in disguise nor triumph! Except the King of Kings, the Lord Jesus Himself! And when He draped Jewish legs over the bristly sides of the short and humble animal, some little donkey became the steed of the Savior as he rode into Jerusalem. Why?
There's a command God gave Israel in Deuteronomy 17, which both Solomon and David disobeyed, …15 "...you shall surely set a king over you whom the LORD your God chooses, one from among your countrymen you shall set as king over yourselves; you may not put a foreigner over yourselves who is not your countryman. 16"Moreover, he shall not multiply horses for himself, nor shall he cause the people to return to Egypt to multiply horses..." In context God had told the Israelites He did not want them to buy horses from Egypt nor return to that country again, the slavery of the Egyptians being so harsh. God didn't want the Hebrew kings to become arrogant as the kings around them were. Even in his first earthly crowning moment, Jesus chose a lowly donkey to ride into the most coveted city on earth, as the King.
The picture here is that our Christ, the King and Creator of the universe, assumed the humility of the lowliest of men and rode a donkey when he could have claimed any horse in Jerusalem!
