According to this handy list, citations of Zechariah are featured the most prominently in Matthew, and so we will focus our attention there.  The first citation occurs in Matthew 21:5, but let’s read the citation in its context in Matt 21:1-7 (citation will be in italics):

[1] And when they drew near unto Jerusalem and came into Bethphage unto the Mount of Olives, then Jesus sent two disciples [2] saying to them: “Go unto the village opposite you, and immediately you shall discover a donkey which has been bound and a colt with it; release them and lead them to me. [3] And if someone would say something to you, say that their lord has need, and immediately he shall send them.”  [4] And this happen so that the words of the prophet would be fulfilled, who said:

[5]Speak to the daughter, Zion;

See your king comes to you 

Gentle and mounted upon a donkey

And upon a colt, a son of a beast of burden

[6] And the disciples went and did just as Jesus had commanded, [7] leading the donkey and the colt and setting upon them their garments, and he sat down upon them. 

Now let’s refresh our memory about the text that is being cited here, which is Zechariah 9:9.  In the NRSV this reads:

Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! 

Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem!

Lo, your king comes to you;

Triumphant and victorious is he,

Humble and riding a donkey,

On a colt, the foal of a donkey.

Whereas the LXX text reads:

Rejoice greatly, daughter Zion!

Proclaim, daughter Jerusalem!

See your king comes to you, 

Righteous and saving is this man,

Gentle and mounted upon a beast of burden and a new colt.

Matthew’s citation is obviously either paraphrasing the text or drawing from a manuscript tradition that is not cited in either the LXX or NRSV.  It seems that the text Matthew is drawing from more closely resembles the LXX text here, leading to the awkward logistics of Jesus riding both a donkey and a colt.  This seems to be a change Matthew has inserted so that circumstances more closely resemble the text of Zechariah.  The parallel passage in Mark 11:1-10 has only a single colt, which is also the case in Luke 19:28-38.  John 12:14-15, which also cites Zechariah, simply reads:

[14] And Jesus discovering a donkey sat upon it, just as it is written:

[15] Fear not, daughter Zion!

See you king comes,

Seated upon the colt of a donkey.

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Matthew, Mark, and Luke are known as the Synoptic Gospels because they look quite similar to each other, and the scholarly consensus is that both Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source for their text (the evidence for this is pretty plain, since in some places there are basically verbatim quotes)¹. The implication here is that Matthew actually changes Mark’s source text to make it better align with Zechariah, to the point that it requires the absurd image of Jesus riding both a colt and a donkey at the same time. 

We should ask ourselves, what is the value that Matthew takes from Zechariah that causes him to actually make this change? Within Zechariah 9, there is an argument to be made that the King coming to daughter Zion and daughter Jerusalem is in fact God.  It is also the case that Zechariah 9 concludes with the following passage( vv. 14-16):²

[14] And the Lord shall be against them

And shall go out as a bolt of lightning,

And the Lord Almighty shall trumpet with a trumpet

And shall proceed in his threatening surge.

[15] The Lord Almighty shall shield them,

And they shall consume them

And bury them in slingstones

And they shall drink from them as wine

And they shall be filled as the bowls of the altar

[16] And the Lord shall same them on this day, 

His people as sheep,

Since holy stones roll upon his earth.

[17] Because if anything of his is good and if anything of his is fine,

Grain shall be to young men and sweet-smelling wine shall be unto maidens. 

Here I think we see a message that is possibly compelling for several reasons, obviously at least in part because of its utopian ending and in part because it paints a picture where the enemies of God are devoured and their blood anoints God’s people like they are themselves the anointed altar. This is perhaps a compelling message of divine judgment to a people whose region had just been sacked by Rome, and who found themselves recently in need of a replacement for the physical altar of the temple, which no longer existed.  

As we shall see, this citation also fits into the larger pattern of Zechariah’s use in Matthew.  Viewed, together, passages from Zechariah are used to make the fall of Jerusalem at the hands of the Romans intelligible, and to fit Jesus’ crucifixion into an eschatological framework in which this worldly calamity is understood as a necessary precursor to God’s ultimate triumph and the ushering in of utopia. 

1. If you want to read more about this, a good primer can be found in Vol VIII of the New Interpreter’s Bible, in the essay “Jesus and the Gospels” in the Source Criticism subsection.  The introductory essay to Matthew in the same volume also elaborates on this. ↩︎
2. Here I am citing only the LXX since Matthew seems to prefer that text.  For a comparison of texts you can view posts here and here. ↩︎