1st Reading, 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Zechariah 9:9-10

The arrival of the Messiah

[9] Rejoice greatly. O daughter of Zion!
Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem!
Lo, your king comes to you;
triumphant and victorious is he,
humble and riding on an ass,
on a colt the foal of an ass.
[10] I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim
and the war horse from Jerusalem;
and the battle how shall he cut off,
and he shall command peace to the nations;
his dominion shall be from sea to sea,
and from the River to the ends of the earth.
_________________

Commentary:

9:1-14:21. The prophecies concerning the new circumstances of Jerusalem and Judah in chapters 7-8 give way now to two long oracles describing how that definitive time will he established by the Messiah (chaps. 9-10), and how the kingdom of God will come about (chaps. 12-14). Worked in among these themes are short prophetical pieces which are apparently anonymous, for there is no mention of Zechariah in them and no dates are given. The two oracles start in the same way: “An oracle. The word of the Lord ...”(9:1; 12:1), a formula which is also used at the start of the book of Malachi (Mal 1:1). Because this construction is found on only these three occasions in the Old Testament, the three pieces are thought to come from some third source and to have found their way into the biblical text here -- two into the book of Zechariah and one into that of Malachi.

9:1-11:17. This first oracle includes two prophetical proclamations -- one about the advent of the Messiah king (9:1-10:12), and the other about the rejection of the good shepherd who tries to lead the people along the paths of faithfulness and unity, (11:1-17). The first one starts with a prophetical description of the victorious progress of the Lord as he makes his way down to Jerusalem from the north (9:1-8); then the city is invited to rejoice at the arrival of its king (9:9-10); and finally the restoration of Israel is proclaimed (9:11-17).

9:9-10. The prophet now speaks directly to Jerusalem (“daughter of Zion”) and her citizens (“daughter of Jerusalem”) as representatives of the entire chosen people. An invitation to rejoice and celebrate is often found in the Old Testament in connection with the arrival of the messianic era (cf. Is 12:6; 54:1; Zeph 3:14); here it is issued because Jerusalem’s king is arriving. Although the text does not say so explicitly, it is implied that he is the descendant of David; there is an echo here of 2 Samuel 7:12-16 and Isaiah 7:14. This king is distinguished by what he is and what he does. The word “triumphant” translates the Hebrew saddiq, which means “just”: he does the will of God perfectly; and the term “victorious’ means that he enjoys divine protection and salvation.

The Septuagint and the Vulgate, however, read it as meaning that he was the saviour. He is also “humble”, that is, he is not boastful in the presence of either God or men. He is peaceable -- as can be seen from the fact that he rides not on a horse like kings of the time but on an ass, like the princes of ancient times (cf. Gen 49:11; Judg 5:10; 10:4; 12:14). He will cause the weapons of war to disappear from Samaria and Judah (cf. Is 2:4, 7; Mic 5:9), who will form a single, united people; and he will also establish peace among the nations (v. 10). This king has features similar to those of the “servant of the Lord” of whom Isaiah spoke (cf. Is 53:11) and to those of the lowly people whom God found acceptable (cf. Zeph 2:3; 3:12). Our Lord Jesus Christ fulfilled this prophecy when he entered Jerusalem before the Passover and was acclaimed by the crowd as the Messiah, the Son of David (cf. Mt 21:1-5; Jn 12:14). “The ‘King of glory’ (Ps 24:7-10) enters his City ‘riding on an ass’ (Zech 9:9). Jesus conquers the Daughter of Zion, a figure of his Church, neither by ruse nor by violence, but by the humility that bears witness to the truth (cf. Jn 18:37)” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 559).

In an allegorical reading, Clement of Alexandria takes the young ass of v. 9 to stand for people who are not subject to evil: “It was not enough to say a ‘colt’; the sacred writer added, ‘the foal of an ass’, to emphasize the youth of the humanity of Christ, his eternal youth. The divine groom tends to us and trains us, the youngest, smallest colts (Paedagogus, 1, 15, 1).
___________________________
Source: "The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries". Biblical text taken from the Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries made by members of the Faculty of Theology of the University of Navarre, Spain. Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland. Reprinted with permission from Four Courts Press and Scepter Publishers, the U.S. publisher.