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| Entry into Jerusalem, 12th Century Mosaic, S. Marco |
Proclaim it aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem!
Behold, your King comes to you;
He is righteous and saving;
He is gentle and mounted upon a donkey, even a young foal.
He will utterly destroy the chariots out of Ephraim
and the horse out of Jerusalem.
The bow of war shall be utterly destroyed,
and there shall be abundance and peace among the nations.
He shall rule over the waters as far as the sea
and over the rivers to the ends of the earth.
And by the blood of your covenant,
you freed your prisoners from the pit having no water.
You prisoners from the congregation,
you shall live in the fortress,
and for one day of your exile,
I will repay to you double. (Zech 9:9–12 LXX)
Be glad, therefore, O Jerusalem, since of such a kind is a king appointed for you by God, and he has come to you, capable of saving his own on account of the divine influence accruing to Him and justly inflicting total punishment on the adversaries. While he is riding a lowly animal for the reason that He has just arrived back from captivity, he assumes great power through divine grace, and so from Ephraim and from Jerusalem he will remove all the chariots of the adversaries, every war horse and every battle bow—that is to say, he will drive off all enemies so that there will be no longer any adversary against the country of Judah. He will also wipe out a great multitude of the adversaries and completely deprive them of peace, crushed and destroyed in a war waged by him.
Theodore of Mopsuestia, Commentary on Zechariah 9.8–10
It was fitting that the herald of his resurrection is reported to have been sitting, so that by sitting he might prefigure him who, having triumphed over the author of death, would ascend to his seat in the everlasting kingdom. Concerning this he said a little later, as he appeared to his disciples: All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me; and the evangelist Mark says: The Lord, after He had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven and sat down at God’s right hand. [The angel] was sitting upon the stone with which the tomb was closed, but which had been rolled away, to teach that He had cast down and triumphed over the closed places of the lower world by his power, so that He might lift up to the light and the rest of paradise all of His own whom He found there, according to the prophet’s You also because of the blood of your covenant, have led your prisoners back from the pit, in which there is no water.
Venerable Bede, Homily on the Gospels 2.7
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