Why Did Jesus Ride A Donkey Instead Of A Horse? (Find Out!)

My son has been learning about the Bible in school recently, as we start leading up to the holiday season.

He always likes to help me out with our horses and ask incessant questions (which I love!) about anything to do with them.

One thing that has been on his mind recently, since he’s been learning about it in school recently, is the issue of why Jesus rode a donkey and not a horse.

After all, my son asked, isn’t he supposed to be the son of God and savior of mankind?

Well, why did Jesus ride a donkey instead of a horse?

In the ancient world in the Middle East, mounts were an important symbol. To ride a horse to a city was to ride to war; to ride a donkey, was to ride in peace. Jesus was not like the other kings of gilded temples of his time: he was just an ordinary man, his kingdom not of this world.

Donkeys were a really important symbol of peace, then.

The particular moment of importance when Jesus rides a horse to Jerusalem is the last time he enters, before he is crucified.

He knows that he rides to his own demise, and yet he rides in peace.

What is the significance of a donkey in the Bible?

The Bible drips with symbolism from every page, and given Jesus’s proximity to donkeys in the Gospels, we can imagine that they are a very important symbol overall.

So, what exactly do they mean?

The significance of donkeys in the Bible is manifold, just like with more or less any symbol.

There are two essential meanings of the donkey, though.

The first is as a symbol of service and humility; Jesus may have been the son of God, but the purpose of his presence on Earth was to guide and shepherd humanity, not to rule them.

Furthermore, he was there to be sacrificed for the sins of humanity.

The other important symbolic meaning of the donkey is as a symbol of peace.

As I mentioned, donkeys were not ridden to war. Only powerful warhorses could be used for that purpose.

So, for a well-known person to ride a donkey to a city, was for them to indicate that they came in peace.

This, then, is the symbolic significance of donkeys.

So, let’s try and put that into the context of Jesus’s ride to Jerusalem.

Why did Jesus ride a donkey into Jerusalem?

Jesus comes to Jerusalem several times over the course of his life, but the final time is the particularly important one.

The image is likely one you remember leaning about: Jesus atop a humble ass, being fanned by the people with palm fronds as he enters the city.

The most important part of this is simply the aspect of humility.

All Jesus ever was in his lifetime, especially his actual historical lifetime, was a lowly carpenter, with a message of morality and brotherhood.

The donkey reflects that perfectly; horses were expensive, and so most ordinary folk would ride donkeys.

If Jesus was a king, as he claimed to be king of the Jews, then, riding a horse to Jerusalem would have been an act of war.

Whether the outcome would have been different is another question; either way, he’s crucified by the Romans.

But Jesus’s whole message was always about not only peace, but turning the other cheek in the face of an attack.

Peace, indeed pacifism, were the goals; donkeys are a great symbol of this.

What did Jesus say about the donkey?

Jesus himself is not recorded to have said much about the donkey that he rode into Jerusalem.

Again, it was not even necessarily a conscious act for him; had he wanted a horse, he probably wouldn’t have been able to get one.

There are times in the Bible where Jesus requests others to get him a donkey, sometimes specifically a wild donkey, but he doesn’t have much to say beyond this.

However, Jesus’s riding of the donkey echoes the regal arrival of a king in the book of Zechariah from the Old Testament: ‘Lo, your king comes to you, triumphant and victorious is he; humble and riding on a donkey.’

Kings were supposed to be able to show two sides of themselves: their capacity for war, and their ability to be humble and just like their subjects.

There was no king to whom this was more important than Jesus: of course, we can disagree about whether the historical Jesus claimed to be king of anything, but as far as what the Bible was trying to achieve, it’s quite clear that the donkey was an important symbol of peace and humility.

It’s a simple message of humility, then, to put it simply.

Donkeys are fantastic work animals for those living at this time, but you cannot ride a donkey to war.

Jesus was, according to the Bible, the son of God and lord of the kingdom of heaven; he preached pacificism and turning the other cheek, and he effectively offered himself up to the Romans without resisting.

The donkey was an important symbol of this need for peace, as well as of Jesus’s humility.