310 VISIONS AND PROPHECIES OF ZECHARIAH
it does suggest the idea of lowliness, in keeping with what had just been said of Him as being " poor " or " afflicted." At the same time, as there is a contrast suggested in the context between the great Gentile world-conqueror, who with his chariots and horses comes to subdue and tread down, and Israel s Redeemer-King, who comes to " speak peace," and as in the loth verse, the horse is certainly one of the emblems of war, His riding upon an ass does also symbolise $&& peaceable character of His mission.
Before passing on to the roth verse, let me very briefly point out the fulfilment of this prophetic picture of the Messiah in the Christ of history :
(a) The Messiah was to be, in a peculiar manner, Zion s King; and our Lord Jesus Christ was born " King of the Jews," and the very inscription on His cross, Jesus Nasa- renus, Rex Jud&orum, still proclaims this everlasting, indis soluble relationship between Christ and Israel. It is true that the Jews as a nation still say, " We will not have this Man to reign over us," and that the " many days during which the children of Israel abide without a king and with out a prince " still continue. But Jesus of Nazareth is Israel s King; and, as sure and certain as there was once a cross raised for Him on Golgotha, so certain is it that " the Lord God " will yet " give unto Him the throne of His Father David," and that He will " reign on Mount Zion and before His ancients gloriously."
(V) " Behold, thy King cometh unto thee" which reminds us of the pathetic lament of the evangelist, " He came unto His own," i.e., His own estate, His own possession (the word being in the neuter), the land and people where above all other places in the world He had a right to expect a welcome, and to be greeted with the enthusiastic joy depicted by the prophet ; but, alas ! as the sequel proved, " His own " they that were His by reason of peculiar and manifold relationship, and who ought to have been prepared for Him as a bride for the bridegroom " received Him not? (c) And Christ is the only Person in all history whose character and experience answer to the description of the
