Matthew 21:11

And the multitude said,.... Or the people, as the Vulgate Latin, and Munster's Hebrew Gospel read; the common people, that went before, and followed after him: these knew Christ better than the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Scribes and Pharisees, and rulers of the people.

Christ's priestly office was, of all the three, last discovered. [2.] Yet they missed it, in saying he was of Nazareth; and it helped to confirm some in their prejudices against him. Note, Some that are willing to honour Christ, and bear their testimony to him, yet labour under mistakes concerning him, which would be rectified if they would take pains to inform themselves.

This is Jesus The Prophet - Ο προφητης That prophet whom Moses spoke of, Deu 18:18. I will raise them up a prophet - like unto thee, etc. Every expression of the multitude plainly intimated that they fully received our blessed Lord as the promised Messiah. - How strange is it that these same people (if the creatures of the high priest be not only intended) should, about five days after, change their hosannas for, Away with him! crucify him! crucify him! How fickle is the multitude!

These verses contain a very remarkable passage in our Lord Jesus Christ’s life. They describe his public entry into Jerusalem when he came there for the last time, before he was crucified. There is something peculiarly striking in this incident in our Lord’s history. The narrative reads like the account of some royal conqueror’s return to his own city: “A very great multitude” accompanies him in a kind of triumphal procession. Loud cries and expressions of praise are heard around him: “All the city was moved.” The whole transaction is singularly at variance with the past tenor of our Lord’s life; it is curiously unlike the ways of him who did not “cry nor strive ” nor let his voice be heard “in the streets”—who withdrew himself from the multitude on other occasions, and sometimes said to those he healed, “See thou say nothing to any man.” ( Mark 1:44 ). And yet the whole transaction admits of explanation. The reasons of this public entry are not hard to find out. Let us see what they were. The plain truth is that our Lord knew well that the time of his earthly ministry was drawing to a close; he knew that the hour was approaching when he must finish the mighty work he came to do, by dying for our sins upon the cross. He knew that his last journey had been accomplished, and that there remained nothing now in his earthly ministry but to be offered as a sacrifice on Calvary. Knowing all this, he no longer, as in times past, sought secrecy; knowing all this, he thought it good to enter the place where he was to be delivered to death, with peculiar solemnity and publicity. It was not fitting that the Lamb of God should come to be slain on Calvary privately and silently. Before the great sacrifice for the sin of the world was offered up, it was right that every eye should be fixed on the victim.

These verses contain a very remarkable passage in our Lord Jesus Christ’s life. They describe his public entry into Jerusalem when he came there for the last time, before he was crucified. There is something peculiarly striking in this incident in our Lord’s history. The narrative reads like the account of some royal conqueror’s return to his own city: “A very great multitude” accompanies him in a kind of triumphal procession. Loud cries and expressions of praise are heard around him: “All the city was moved.”