Philip Schaff's Popular Commentary (4 vols)

John 12:13

John 12:13. Took the branches of the palm trees. The word rendered ‘branches' occurs only here in the New Testament. It is the top of a palm tree where the fruit is produced. We are to understand by the word, therefore, not branches only, but fruit-bearing branches, those from which in due season the fruit would hang. Hence it is not palms of victory that we have before us, but the palm branches of the feast of Tabernacles, the most characteristic feature of that greatest festival of the year, when the last fruits, ‘the wine and the oil' as well as ‘the corn,' were ripe, and when the Messiah was expected to come to His temple. Hence also the articles before ‘branches' and ‘palm trees,' not to mark palm trees growing by the wayside, but the well-known palm branches so closely connected with the feast. With the idea of this feast the Jews had been accustomed to associate the highest blessings of Messianic times, and at the moment, therefore, when they hail Jesus as the long expected Messiah and King, the thoughts of it naturally fill their minds.

And went forth to meet him, and they cried out, Hosanna: Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord, and, The King of Israel. The words, thus uttered with loud shouts of joy, correspond to the action of which we have spoken. Those in the first clause of the quotation are taken from Psalms 118:26, and are words which were undoubtedly used at the feast of Tabernacles. Whether we consider them in connection with their place in the psalm or with the typical meaning of the feast, they were peculiarly appropriate to the present moment. The psalm was acknowledged to be Messianic, and both psalm and feast celebrate the triumphant coming of Messiah to His house and people, when the gates of righteousness are opened and Israel goes in and praises the Lord (Psalms 118:19). The Lord, too, appears in the psalm in precisely the same character as that in which we have Him here before us, that of one who has suffered and overcome (John 12:22). The appellation given to Jesus in the second clause, and probably to be regarded as a second cry, points onward to the prophecy of Zechariah (chap. John 9:9) quoted in John 12:15. Hosanna is a rendering into Greek letters of the Hebrew words, ‘Save, we pray' (Psalms 118:25).

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Philip Schaff's Popular Commentary (4 vols)

John 12:13

Old Testament

New Testament