“Then in haste every man of them took his garment and put it under him on the bare steps, and they blew the trumpet and proclaimed, ‘Jehu is king.'” – 2 Kings 9:13
Buried deep in the history of the kings of Israel we catch a little glimpse of how the people of Israel celebrated a newly appointed king. God told the prophet Elisha that Jehu was to become king of Israel. In Israel, kings were covered in oil at God’s direction rather than merely crowned with a crown. The Hebrew word for being anointed like this is “Messiah”. After Jehu had the anointing oil poured on his head the people acknowledged him as their king with a celebration that included laying their outer garments on the ground in front of him so his feet wouldn’t touch the dirt.
This helps us understand an event that happened hundreds of years later when Jesus of Nazareth rode into Jerusalem and a great crowd celebrated by waving palm branches and laying their outer garments on the ground ahead of him. What happened in Jerusalem on the Sunday before Jesus was killed on a cross was His earthly celebration as God’s anointed Messiah and Israel’s true king. The people celebrated His coronation as their ancestors had done for centuries.
What they didn’t understand was that the Kingdom of Jesus didn’t just include a small part of the world called Israel. Jesus is the righteous and eternal King of the entire world. His true coronation wasn’t performed by a crowd but by God the Father Who crowned Jesus King through His suffering, death, burial, and resurrection. All hail #KingJesus!