We approach our Passiontide and Easter readings asking the city’s question in Matthew’s account of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem: ‘Who is this?’ (Matthew 21.10).
In the name of the Lord
As Jesus rode to the Temple the crowds quoted Psalm 118.26, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord’ (Matthew 21.9). Originally these were words of welcome to pilgrims coming to give thanks in the Temple, and by Jesus’ time Psalm 118 was regularly used at Passover and Tabernacles. The Mishnah, the written collection of oral laws, tells us that Psalms 113 to 118 were sung at Passover (M Pesahim 10.6-7), as they were by Jesus and his disciples (Matthew 26.30). And Psalm 118 was sung as palm branches were waved at the Tabernacles Feast (M Sukkah 3.9).
Matthew’s connection of the words from Psalm 118 and the question, ‘Who is this?’ reminds us of the importance of the Jewish Scriptures as the first Christians began to understand who Jesus was and sought to explain his significance for their own faith. Only after ‘he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures’ on the road to Emmaus was the risen Jesus ‘made known’ to two grieving followers ‘in the breaking of the bread’ (Luke 24.13-35, Easter 3, see issue 71). We are seeing an example of exactly this process of interpretation as the New Testament reads Psalm 118 as testimony to Jesus.
Words that pilgrims sang in procession to the Temple, ‘Hosanna [Save us], Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord’ (Psalm 118.25-26), became for an occupied people a prayer for the restoration of the Davidic kingdom. To the question, ‘Who is this?’ the crowd excitedly responds, ‘This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth’ (Matthew 21.11), and about ten years after Jesus’ death we hear that the Romans executed Theudas, a ‘prophet’ who led a crowd in an uprising (Josephus, Antiquities 20.97-98; Acts 5.36).
The way in which Psalm 118 is used to answer the question, ‘Who is this?’ is rooted in Jewish Messianic hope, and we find references to ‘the Son of David’ (Matthew 21.9), ‘the coming kingdom of our ancestor David’ (Mark 11.10), ‘the king’ (Luke 19.38), and ‘the King of Israel’ (John 12.13) inserted when it is quoted. So important was the Psalm for the first Christians that ‘the one who comes’ seems to have become a title they gave to Jesus (see e.g. Matthew 11.3; 23.39; John 1.27; 11.27; Acts 19.4; Hebrews 10.37).
The cornerstone
The disciples on the Emmaus road learned that ‘it is written that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise’ (Luke 24.46; see 1 Corinthians 15.3-4). Peter used Psalm 118.22, the rejected stone that became the cornerstone, to explain the death and resurrection of Jesus (Acts 4.11). The psalm helped Jesus’ followers to understand his rejection by the crowds who initially welcomed him (Matthew 21.9-11,42). But those who knew the risen Christ found in Psalm 118 a testimony to his fulfilment of Israel’s hopes.
(Go to the second part of this article published in Issue 71, May/June 2014)