Palm Sunday Foreshadowed
Over the course of Biblical history, God raised up various Messianic figures for Israel. Curiously, however, quite a few of them were accepted by the Gentiles before they were accepted by Israel.
Joseph was initially rejected in Israel and yet later exalted in Egypt. Even his brothers mistook him for an Egyptian.
Moses’s story wasn’t dissimilar. Rejected by his brethren, he took up residence in Midian, where he too was mistaken for an Egyptian (Exod. 2.19). (As it happens, both Moses and Joseph took Gentile brides.)
And David, hated and hounded by Saul, fled to the land of the Philistines, where he won the favour of the king of Gath and acquired many Gittite followers (II Sam. 15.18).
In each case, the reason why God’s Messiah was rejected was what he’d cost his people.
Joseph’s brothers had to submit to Joseph’s authority, which they didn’t want to do.
Moses stirred up trouble between the Israelites and their overlord (Pharaoh), which made him decidedly unpopular.
And God’s choice of David meant the end of Saul and his dynasty, which didn’t go down well with (most of) the Benjaminites.
A related event then occurred later in David’s life, but with a twist.
David sought to bring the ark of God up to Jerusalem, which wasn’t a bad idea in and of itself. Indeed, initially things went well. As the ark went up, the people went before it with songs of joy and with cypress branches in hand.1
But things soon took a turn for the worse. When the ark reached Nachon, where it should have been steady (Nachon means ‘established’!), the oxen stumbled, and the LORD ‘broke out’ against his people (II Sam. 6.7–8). The presence of God evidently came at a cost.
David therefore rejected the ark. He dispatched it to (what sounds like) a Gentile household (viz. the house of Obed-Edom the Gittite), whose people were blessed, at which point David decided it might not be a bad idea to welcome the ark into Jerusalem after all (II Sam. 6.10–11).
As such, the ark’s entrance to Jerusalem was a miniature of Palm Sunday.
When Jesus travelled up to Jerusalem, like the ark, he was greeted with songs and greenery. And rightly so. Jesus was like the ark.
Yet when Jesus arrived at the place where he should have been welcomed, he became a troublemaker. Angered by the state of the Temple, Jesus broke out against the moneychangers and lambasted Jerusalem’s leadership. His Messiahship came at a cost. Consequently, Jesus was rejected by his own people, at which point, like many Messiahs before him, Jesus was embraced by the Gentiles. The age-old story thus began to replay itself. The one who thought he had ‘laboured in vain’ became ‘a light to the Gentiles’ (Isa. 49.4–6).
But God’s story isn’t yet over. The day will come when Jesus’ people will welcome him, just as the people of Joseph, Moses, and David did. ‘Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows’, they will say, ‘even though we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted’ (Isa. 53.4). And if Israel’s rejection of their Messiah has meant the reconciliation of the world, then what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead (Rom. 11)?
The cypress branches are mentioned only in Samuel. Where Samuel has בכל עצי ברושים, Chronicles has בכל עז ובשירים = ‘with all might/praise and with songs’.
That was very interesting! Thank you for your insights. Especially your connection with Romans 11 was powerful!
I certainly like the parallel idea of the people going with "cypress branches in hand" (just as the palm branches in the gospels). Not to take away from that symbolism, but just to add, FYI, the LXX of 2Sam 6:5 renders that portion in Greek as, "ἐν ὀργάνοις ἡρμοσμένοις ἐν ἰσχύι" ("with fitted/tuned instruments with strength"). It seems as if the LXX translators may have understood the fir/cypress as a reference to the strength (or maybe the playing robustness) of the wooden fitted or tuned instruments.