<p>11:11 <em>And he entered into Jerusalem and went into the temple, and when he had looked at everything, it being now evening, he went out to Bethany with the twelve</em>- This again was a conscious parody of Judaism&rsquo;s Messianic hopes. Their idea was that Messiah would enter Jerusalem in triumph against their Gentile enemies, and enter the temple. This was based upon their reading of Mal. 3:1: &ldquo;The Lord whom you seek shall suddenly come to His temple&rdquo;. But the context of Malachi 3 required a positive response by Israel to the herald of Messiah, i.e. John the Baptist. And this had not been forthcoming. And the next verse goes on to suggest that this coming of Messiah will not be of much blessing to Israel- &ldquo;But who may abide the day of His coming i.e., &ldquo;to His temple&rdquo;? And who shall stand when He appears?&rdquo; (Mal. 3:2).</p><p>Mark&rsquo;s record appears to state that the Lord first entered the temple, looked around and walked out (Mk. 11:11) and the next day returned to cleanse the temple of traders. It could be that He cleansed the temple twice. Or it could be that this silent looking around and walking away, returning to Bethany, &lsquo;the house of the poor&rsquo;, was another intentional creation of an anti-climax. The Jews expected Him to do something dramatic- and He simply looked around in sadness and left for &lsquo;the house of the poor&rsquo;- to return and cast out the traders and thus make the performance of sacrifice impossible there.</p><p>His &lsquo;going out of the city&rsquo; is allusive to the language of Ezekiel, in that the glory begins within the city but progressively lifts up and goes out of it. Going to Bethany continues the radical subversion of Jewish Messianic expectations. They had expected a glorious entry into Jerusalem by Messiah, and His entering the temple in order to fulfil the hopes of Ezekiel&rsquo;s temple visions- that Messiah in glory would enter the temple. Instead, the Lord enters Jerusalem on a rider-less donkey, Himself sitting awkwardly on a wayward foal, enters the temple and castigates the Jews, throwing them out of it. And now He leaves the city and goes to Bethany, &ldquo;the house of the poor&rdquo;. Rather like a pretender to the Presidency mounting a not very serious coup attempt, and going to spend the night in a low cost housing area, perhaps in an apartment in a run down tenement block known as &lsquo;the house of the poor&rsquo;. Or perhaps a night shelter would be the most dynamic equivalent. That is not to say that the home in Bethany was actually poor, my comment is on the meaning of &lsquo;Bethany&rsquo; as &lsquo;house of the poor&rsquo;. The use of&nbsp;<em>eis</em>, &quot;into&quot;, rather than a word carrying the sense of&nbsp;<em>unto</em>, serves to heighten the sense of anti-climax. He ended this parody of a triumphal entry by entering into 'the house of the poor'.&nbsp;</p><p>The Lord being the psychologist&nbsp;<em>extraordinaire</em>&nbsp;that He was, it could almost seem that He was engineering a situation which would turn public opinion against Him and lead to His betrayal to the Romans. And yet on the other hand, He had made all these points multiple times in His teaching, beginning in the Sermon on the Mount. He had explained as clearly as could be that His Kingdom was not at that time a political one, rather was it about service of others and internal transformation. He had so often elevated humility above anything else. But all His teaching had been skim listened to; people had taken what they wanted from Him, and decided that He was who they wanted and needed Him to be, rather than who He said He was. And so through this parody of a triumphal entry, He was visually and very publicly explaining what He really stood for. And thereby very powerfully exposing their hopes as mere selfishness, their ideals as misplaced, their understandings as faulty. I wouldn&rsquo;t say that&nbsp;He did this with the express intention of bringing about His death, but rather motivated by the hope that His one last appeal might still trigger response amongst the true &ldquo;daughter of Zion&rdquo;. His predictions of His death, however, indicate that He knew what would happen. A psychologist weighing up the situation as it stood at the triumphant entry, even if he didn&rsquo;t know how the story would end, would likely be able to predict accurately what would&rsquo;ve happened. The Jews would become deeply angry with Jesus, their hopes in Him would have turned to hatred and anger, they would desire to kill Him, and being unable to legally do so, would hand Him over to the Romans to execute. Indeed, Judas had already trodden this road one step ahead of the masses.</p>