As Jesus approached Jerusalem, the crowd’s excitement intensified. Many of the people spread their coats in the road, and others spread leafy branches which they had cut from the fields. Spreading their coats in the road in front of Jesus was a customary way of expressing submission to a monarch. It acknowledged that the king was elevated above the common people, and symbolically affirmed that they were under his feet. Superficially and momentarily at least, the crowd was acknowledging Jesus as the