Matthew 21:4

ἵνα πληρωθῇ : is to be taken here as always in this Gospel, in its strictly final sense. Such is the view of the evangelist and the view he wishes his readers to take. But it does not follow from this that Christ's whole action proceeded from a conscious intention to fulfil a prophecy. On the contrary, the less intention on His part the greater the apologetic value of the correspondence between prophecy and fact. Action with intention might show that He claimed to be, not that He was, the Messiah. On the other hand, His right to be regarded as the Messiah would have stood where it was though He had entered Jerusalem on foot. That right cannot stand or fall with any such purely external circumstance, which can at best possess only the value of a symbol of those spiritual qualities which constitute intrinsic fitness for Messiahship. But Jesus, while fully aware of its entirely subordinate importance, might quite conceivably be in the mood to give it the place of a symbol, all the more that the act was in harmony with His whole policy of avoiding display and discouraging vulgar Messianic ideas and hopes. There was no pretentiousness in riding into Jerusalem on the foal of an ass. It was rather the meek and lowly One entering in character, and in a character not welcome to the proud worldly-minded Jerusalemites. The symbolic act was of a piece with the use of the title “Son of Man,” shunning Messianic pretensions, yet making them in a deeper way.