Today, we take a little diversion from Psalm 91 to investigate Palm Sunday.
Jesus enters Jerusalem just before Passover, and is met by a huge crowd. He comes to them riding on a donkey, thus fulfilling Zechariah 9:9, which says, “Your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey” (NIV).
This fulfillment of prophecy also causes us to look at Zechariah 3:8 and 6:12, which speak of the Messiah as a “Branch” that God will send or raise up. In accord with these prophecies, the response of the people in Jerusalem for Passover is to wave branches in the air. The greatest and most joyful feast of the Jews is Tabernacles. Times of great public rejoicing in Bible times often incorporated many of the customs of Tabernacles (1 Maccabees 13:51; 2 Maccabees 10:6).
As a result, the Palm Sunday procession described in the gospels, closely resembles Tabernacles, although it occurs leading up to Passover. People carry and wave branches of trees, as they normally do at Tabernacles. They cry aloud “save now” (Hebrew hosanna) from Psalm 118 (Ps. 118:25 KJV), the psalm that actually describes a procession appropriate to Tabernacles. During Tabernacles, the priests beat their branches (Hebrew lulavs) against the side of the altar of the temple, and decorate the altar with a canopy of branches woven like the tabernacles Israel dwelt in during their forty years in the wilderness. Psalm 118:27 in the NIV says, “With boughs in hand, join in the festal procession up to the horns of the altar.” The King James translates this verse as, “Bind the sacrifice with cords, even to the horns of the altar.” The NRSV says, “Bind the festal procession with branches, up to the horns of the altar.”
This is an arresting verse, no matter what translation you use, because it seems to describe Jesus being prepared to be sacrificed, even as He is triumphantly escorted by a huge crowd into the Temple courts. However, we must ask, “Does it signify Jesus being bound to the horns of the altar by vines or branches? Does it imply the procession being bound? Does it signify the decoration of the Temple with things representing the feast of Tabernacles? Which of these does it mean?”
We must note that no Levitical ordinance specifies sacrifices being bound to the literal horns of the altar of burnt offering or even killed upon it. (However, the psalm may refer to a sacrifice being tethered to a post near the altar, and hence, in a larger sense, bound to the altar.)
But there are two thought-provoking references to sacrifices being bound. In one case, this involves the ram that served as a substitute for Isaac. In the other, the sacrifice is Jesus.
Isaac is about to be sacrificed, when a ram is caught in a thicket. This occurs on Mt. Moriah (Gen. 22:2), which will later prove to be the Temple Mount (2 Chron. 3:1). The mount itself is the altar. The ram, symbolic of Jesus, who is also our altar of sacrifice, has its horns caught in a thicket – essentially the same material as the branches used in Tabernacles and on Palm Sunday. Thus the sacrifice is bound to the horns of the altar! Jesus on Palm Sunday is thus fulfilling the type for Messiah provided by Isaac, and doing so on the very mountain where Isaac was offered.
Isaiah 53:5 tells us, “By his stripes we are healed.” The word stripes is a Hebrew word pronounced khab-boo-raw’. It designates a weal or black and blue mark taken from a beating, and comes from a word khaw-bar’, which speaks of being bound by a spell. The word khaw-bar can also mean being fascinated with something. It seems to speak of being captivated by Jesus’ suffering love, having it make us spellbound and willing to surrender ourselves, in spite of ourselves.
How appropriate that Jesus is both the ram bound to the altar as our substitute, and one who takes our beating in a way that binds us to Himself – grabs our heart and sympathies, if we recognize the nature of His sacrifice.
Unfortunately for the multitude on the Palm Sunday described in the gospels, they would not recognize a messiah who came to suffer. Immediately after the triumphal procession, John describes several Greek-speaking Jews who insistently wanted to meet the man who generated the celebration of the huge crowd (John 12:20-22). Apparently, they are put off when Jesus tells them, “Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies it remains only a single seed” (John 12:24 NIV).
The bottom line seems to be that they love the celebration of Tabernacles, which is the last of the seven Biblically ordained feasts of Israel, and which signifies the millennial reign of Christ. In short, Tabernacles signifies Christ being physically with us during the millennium, much as the presence of God led and watched over Israel when they dwelt in the wilderness forty years in tabernacles made of branches. On Palm Sunday, those in the city of Jerusalem wanted to remain in the mood and tenor of the Feast of Tabernacles – a time of rejoicing, but God had given them that only as a foretaste of things to come. For the present they had to endure the hardship of the cross symbolized by Passover. And most of them turned from a suffering Messiah. They made the decision of hiding “as it were our faces from him” (Is. 53:3 KJV), rather than being captivated by a love so great that it could only be demonstrated through suffering.
