The entry into Jerusalem MAT 21:9

Jesus came down from the Mount of Olives riding a donkey that had been borrowed for the occasion. Crowds lined the road, laying down cloaks and branches and shouting hosanna to the son of David. Within days the mood would turn, and some of the same people would be calling for his death.

A king arriving on a warhorse signals conquest, but a king on a donkey signals peace, and that is the image a prophet had already written about centuries earlier: righteous and having salvation, lowly and riding on a colt. Jesus arranged the donkey deliberately, so the detail reads as a conscious claim to that promised role rather than an accident of transport. The gentleness of the animal matches the kind of kingship he was showing, not one built on force.

The text itself only notes that within about five days many of those same voices would be shouting something else, without spelling out every reason for the shift. Crowds in Jerusalem at that feast were large and mixed, and enthusiasm for a hoped-for king can curdle quickly when that king does not act the way people expect. The contrast is left stark on purpose, inviting the reader to notice how fast public praise can turn.

Luke records that as Jerusalem came into view, in the middle of a crowd celebrating him as king, Jesus wept over it rather than being swept up in the joy. The passage does not spell out every word of his grief here, but the moment sits right alongside the shouts of hosanna, showing that his reception was not simple triumph for him. Readers commonly take it as sorrow over a city that would soon reject him, held together with his love for it.