Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible · Matthew Capítulo 21

Matthew 21:1. And when they drew nigh unto Jerusalem— The multitude which attended our Lord in this journey, ch. Mat 20:29 having increased prodigiously as he advanced towards Jerusalem, he did not now shun them, and enter the city privately, as he had always done on former occasions.The people were to honour him with the title of the Messiah, publicly, that he might have an opportunity of accepting that august name in the most avowed manner, before he ascended into heaven. Moreover, the chief priests who had issued out a proclamation against him, Joh 11:57 were to be awed, at least for a while, and restrained from offeringhim violence; for, as he had doctrines to teach, rebukes to give, and other things to do, which could not fail to incense those proud rulers, without doubt they would have put him to death prematurely, had not the people appeared on his side, or he himself interfered with divine and irresistible power. Accordingly, after the parable of the husbandman was spoken, Mat 21:45-46 the priests sought to lay hands on him, but feared the multitude, because they took him for a prophet. Nay, the whole council was intimidated by them; for in their deliberation about putting Jesus to death, they said one to another, ch. Matthew 26:5. Not on the feast-day, lest there be an uproar among the people. Our Lord's driving the buyers and sellers out of the temple, his parables of the husbandmen and marriage-supper, representing the rejection of the Jewish nation, and the downfal of the state, with the woes denounced against the Pharisees in their own hearing, made part of the work that he had to do before he ascended, which would have brought instant destruction upon him, had not the great men's rage been restrained by the uncommon respect which the people generally shewed him: wherefore, the multitude being now very great, and Jesus having such good reasons not to shun them as formerly, he sent two of his disciples for an ass which never had been rode upon, but which by his simple volition he could tame; proposing according to the prophesy, Zec 9:9 to ride into the city amid the surrounding throng. Probably there were strait passes in the mount of Olives, through which the road lay, Luk 19:37 and, no doubt, narrow streets in the city also, by which he was to go to the temple. In these narrow passes and lanes Jesus might have been incommoded by the press, had he walked on foot; besides, the strangers who were now at Jerusalem would increase the crowd. It seems they knew of his coming, Joh 12:12 and perhaps expected that he was bringing Lazarus along with him, to shew him in public, as a trophy of his power. (Compare Joh 12:12 with Matthew 21:18.) For the sight of Lazarus in Bethany having already induced many to believe, they might naturally suppose that his appearingopenly would produce the same effect in Jerusalem; and as they were in full hopes that the Messiah's kingdom was to be erected at this passover, they could not but think it necessary, that all opposers should instantly be convinced, and obliged to acknowledge the Messiah's title to the throne of his illustrious ancestors.

St. Mark and St. Luke mention Bethphage and Bethany; whence it seems to follow, that travellers, in their way to Jerusalem from Jericho, arrived at Bethphage before they came to Bethany. These two villages were situated at the foot of the mount of Olives, and the road to the city lay between them; only it was nearer to Bethphage than to Bethany; therefore, when Jesus, in travelling from Jericho, came to the foot of the mountain, he was but a little way from Bethphage, nevertheless, intending to lodge at Bethany with Lazarus, he went thither. Next day, returning to the road from Jericho, he sent the two disciples to Bethphage, with orders to bring the ass, Matthew 21:2. If the reader will view the several expressions used by the Evangelists in the light of this description, he will see the exact propriety of each of them. Jesus sent the disciples away, when he was come nigh to Bethphage and Bethany, at the mount of Olives, as St. Luke tells us; or as St. Mark expresses it, when they came nigh to Jerusalem, unto Bethphage and Bethany; a phrase, which not only determines the place whence the disciples were sent away, but shews on what quarter Jesus and his train were approaching the town. Both the villages being situated at the foot of the mountain, and Jesus being between them, on the road from Jericho to Jerusalem, he might very properly be said to have been nigh to both, and nigh to Jerusalem, which was at the distance of about two miles only. Also he was come to Bethphage, unto the mount of Olives, as St. Matthew expresses it, because, as we before observed, the road was nearer Bethphage than Bethany. And as Jesus was coming from Bethany, when he sent the disciples away, whither he sent them must have been directly opposite to them; hence it is termed the village over-against them;— απεναντι, κατεναντι,— being a little off from the road of the city. See Luke 19:37. Macknight, Lightfoot, and Whitby, on Mark 11:1.

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Matthew 21:3. And straightway he will send them— And He (the Lord) will quickly send them back again. See Beza, Schultens, &c.

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Matthew 21:4. All this was done, &c.— See the note on Zechariah 9:9.

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Matthew 21:7. And brought the ass— The exact knowledge which our Lord shewed of so many minute and most fortuitous particulars, must surely impress the minds of these messengers greatly, and establish the faith of his followers. It is observable,that many such things occurred before his death, which, considered in this view, have a peculiar beauty. Compare Matthew 26:31-35. Mar 14:15-16 and Luke 22:10-13. The and, [και ], like the particle ו vau in the Hebrew, is here used, as it is frequently, to signify even, or that is,—upon an ass, even a colt, &c. They set him thereon, means on their clothes, which they had placed upon the ass. All the Evangelists, except St. Matthew, speak expressly of his riding on the colt.

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Matthew 21:11. And the multitude said, This is Jesus, &c.— The multitude is the appellation which the sacred historians commonly give to Christ'sfriends; wherefore, as they are here said to have called him the prophet of Nazareth of Galilee, we may suppose that they did it with a view to mortify his enemies; as if they had said, "You have always affirmed that no prophet, no Messiah, can arise out of Galilee: what is your opinion now?"—Jesus rode directly to the temple,but did not drive the buyers and sellers out this first day; for St. Mark expressly tells us, Mar 11:11 that it was evening by the time he got thither, and had looked round on all things: whence we learn, that the market in the temple, which he intended to prohibit, was over. It seems he stayed in Jerusalem but a little while. Having made his public appearance in the metropolis, received the title of Messiah openly from the multitude, and surveyed the temple, he left the city without doing any thing, to the great discouragement of the throng who had come in with him, expecting that he was immediately to have laid hold on the reins of government.

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Matthew 21:12. And Jesus went into the temple— See the notes on John 2:14; John 2:25.

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Matthew 21:13. But ye have made it a den of thieves— The Jews, reckoning the lower and outer court of the temple as a place of no sanctity, because it was designed for accommodatingthe Gentile proselytes in their worship, not only kept the daily market there, of such things as were necessary in offering sacrifices, but suffered the common porters, in going from one part of the city to another, to pass through it with their burdens, for the sake of shortening their way: but as these abuses occasioned great disturbances to the proselytes, Jesus reformed them a second time, see Joh 2:14 telling the people around him that the Gentiles worshipped there by divine appointment as well as the Jews; the temple being ordained of God to be the house of prayer for all nations, Mar 11:17 and to prove this, he cited Isa 56:7 from which the inference was plain, that they were guilty of a gross profanation of the temple, who carried on any traffick even in the courts of the Gentiles; much more they, who made gain, committed frauds and extortions in the prosecution of their traffick; because thus they turned God's house of prayer into a den of thieves. The expression of a den of thieves may allude to those gangs of robbers which at that time infested Judea, and used to hide themselves in the holes and dens of the mountains, as appears from several passages in Josephus's history; not but that our blessed Saviour here plainly refers to Jeremiah 7:11. St. Jerome, who thinks this one of our Lord's greatest miracles, in his commentary on the place, gives a lively description of several artifices whereby the avaricious priests endeavoured to extort money. "In the temple of Jerusalem, (says he) the finest and most spacious of any in the world, where the Jews from almost all the countries of the earth assembled, sacrifices of different kinds, some for the rich, and others for the poorer sort, were offered according to the law; but, because those who came from distant countries often wanted such sacrifices, the priests took the advantage of buying up allthe beasts appointed for that purpose, sold them to those who wanted them, and received them again at their hands; and because some who came to worship were so very poor that they could not even purchase the lesser sacrifices, namely birds, the priests placed bankers in thecourts of the temple, to lend money upon security; but finding that they could not do this without transgressing the law, they had recourse to another device, namely, to appoint a kind of pawn-brokers, instead of bankers; that is to say, men, who forthe advancing a small sum, took fruits, herbs, and other commodities, instead of interest-money. Our Lord, therefore, having observed this method of traffick carried on by the priests in his Father's house, not only expelled their agents, but arraigned them also as a band of thieves; for he is really a robber who makes lucre of religion, and whose worship is not so much for the veneration he has for God, as the opportunity of making his own interest and advantage." See Jerome on the place, and bishop Smallbrooke's Vindication of our Saviour's Miracles, vol. 1 Chronicles 4:0 p. 130.

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Matthew 21:27. Neither tell I you— "I do not think it at all necessary to tell you by what authority I do these things; for the other question concerning John, naturally requires to be determined first; and when you think proper to decide that, you may easily perceive that the same answer will serve both:" which was plainly the case; for, as on the one hand, the express testimony which John bore to Christ must be a sufficient proof of his divine mission, if that of John was allowed, (since according to the Jewish maxim, the testimony of one prophet was sufficient to confirm the authority of another); so Christ had spoken in such an honourable manner of John, that to condemn John as an impostor, would imply a like censure on the character of Jesus.

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Matthew 21:33. Hear another parable— Not satisfied with shewing the rulers the heinousness of their sin, in rejecting the Baptist, Jesus judged it proper likewise publicly to represent the crime of the nation, in rejecting all the messengers of God, from first to last; and among the rest his only-begotten Son: at the same time he warned them plainly of their danger, byreason of the punishment which they incurred onaccountofsuch a continued course of rebellion. The outward oeconomy of religion in which they gloried, was to be taken from them; their relation to God, as his people, cancelled; and their national constitution destroyed: but, because these were topics extremelydisagreeable, he couched them under the veil of a parable, which he formed upon one made use of long before by the prophet Isaiah, Isaiah 5:1, &c. where see the notes. This vineyard, with its appurtenances, represents the Mosaical dispensation, a dispensation attended with great present advantages, and many promises of future blessings: the other circumstances of the parable are extremely clear. St. Matthew uses the word ληνον for a wine-press, and St. Mark, υποληνον ; the former signifies the wine-press, the other the cavity under it, wherein the vessel was fixed which received the liquor pressed from the grapes. The one of these naturally implies the other; but our Lord chose to mention both.

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Matthew 21:37. Last of all, he sent unto them his son— That no means might be left untried, God sent unto them his own Son; whose authority, clearly established by undeniable miracles, ought to have been acknowledged with cheerfulness and joy by those wicked men. The question is not here, how prudent it would have been in a human father to venture his son in such a case as this; for the power which God had of raising Christ from the dead, and making all his sufferingsredound to his glory and happiness, quite alters the case. The design is, to shew the patience of God, and the wickedness of the Jews by this emblem; than which nothing can be more expressive. See the note on Luke 20:13.

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