The Donkey and the Colt

Zechariah 9:9 uses Hebrew poetic parallelism four times:

Exult greatly, O daughter Zion!

Shout for joy, O daughter Jerusalem!

Behold: your king is coming to you,

a just savior is he,

Humble, and riding on a donkey,

on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

- Zion is Jerusalem.

- The king is the just savior.

- The donkey is a colt.

- The colt is the foal of a donkey.

In all four cases, the same reality is being described from two different points of view. There is no question that in the Hebrew of Zechariah, the king is not pictured riding two different animals (a donkey and a colt), but just one. Matthew's gospel places a peculiar interpretation on the verse and pictures Jesus perched on two animals of different ages or dismounting and remounting en route. This suggests that the original author of the gospel or else the final editor of the gospel was not very familiar with Hebrew poetry.

Legend: Matthew first written in Aramaic, then translated into Greek. If true, we do not have the original. Syriac: "they put their garments on the colt, and Jesus rode on it."

The final "them" in Matthew could refer to the garments rather than the animals.