“Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout in triumph, Daughter Jerusalem! Look, your King is coming to you; he is righteous and victorious, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the horse from Jerusalem. The bow of war will be removed, and he will proclaim peace to the nations. His dominion will extend from sea to sea, from the Euphrates River to the ends of the earth.” (Zechariah 9:9-10 CSB)
Devotional
When you are waiting for a king to rescue you, you picture something specific. Armour. A warhorse. The kind of entrance that makes your enemies nervous. Zechariah’s original audience knew what power looked like, and they were desperate for it. They had been through exile, through loss, through the long humiliation of a nation that once had everything and now had very little. And into that desperate longing, God sends a prophecy: your King is coming. He is righteous. He is victorious. He is riding on a donkey.
That last detail has always stopped me. Not because it is strange, but because it is so deliberate. God could have said anything. He chose a donkey. He chose the image of a king who arrives without the trappings of military might, without the noise of war, and without the need to prove anything. The victory has already been secured. The humility is not weakness. It is confidence of a completely different kind.
We tend to want God to show up the way we would show up if we were Him. With force. With obvious, undeniable power that silences every doubt and fixes every situation immediately. And He does have that power, all of it. But this passage reminds us that He chooses how He uses it, and His choices consistently surprise us. He came as a baby. He taught from a boat. He rode into Jerusalem on a borrowed donkey. He won the war through a cross. Every time we think we know what rescue should look like, He arrives differently, and it turns out to be exactly right.
The peace he proclaims is not the quiet that comes after you have defeated your enemies yourself. It is the peace that comes from realising the battle belongs to someone else entirely, and that someone has already won it. That is what verse 10 is pointing to: a dominion so complete, so final, that the weapons of war simply become unnecessary. Not because the threat was never real, but because the King is that much greater than the threat.
That is the King we follow. Not one who demands we fight our way to him, but one who rides toward us, humble and victorious at the same time. He meets us where we are, in the ordinary and unglamorous places, and He brings a peace that does not depend on our circumstances being sorted first.
Reflection
I realise I have expectations about how God should show up in my situation, and most of them look like force and speed. I want to hold that more loosely today. The King who rode on a donkey was not diminished by it. He knew exactly what He was doing. I want to trust that He knows exactly what He is doing now too.
Prayer
Father, thank You for a King who comes to us rather than waiting for us to find our way to Him. Forgive us for the times we have dismissed the quiet, humble ways You work because we were looking for something louder. Help us to recognise You in the unexpected arrivals, the small moments, the gentle answers. You are righteous and victorious, and that is more than enough.