[7] For Arthur Carr, this account "leads to the inference that the owner of the ass was an adherent of Jesus, who had perhaps not yet declared himself".

[14] For accuracy, some commentators note that Greek: ο δε πλειστος οχλος (ho de pleistos ochlos) is best read as "most of the people", or "the greatest part of the multitude":[14] thus the Revised Version reads: Nicoll suggests perhaps this minority had no upper garments, or did not care to use them in that way.

It was a custom for every Israelite, once a year, to pay half a shekel towards the temple charge and service, based on the orders given by God to Moses in the wilderness during the numbering of the Israelites, to take half a shekel out of everyone twenty years of age and older, rich or poor (Exodus 30:13), though this does not seem to be designed as a perpetual rule.

They seemed to work within the frame of law when Christ overturned their table, unless it should be objected, that this was not the time of their sitting, because that happened a few days before the Passover, which was in the month Nisan (the tenth of Nisan, when Christ entered the temple), whereas the half shekel should be paid in the month Adar until the twenty fifth of Adar.

[28][29] Citing from Isaiah 56:7; Jeremiah 7:11 Cross reference: Mark 11:17; Luke 19:46 Allison notes that "this section is less about Jesus ... or [John] the Baptist than it is about the chief priests and elders, characterising these as (a) less spiritually aware and perceptive than the multitudes over whom they preside, and (b) moral cowards driven by expediency.

Protestant biblical commentator Heinrich Meyer notes that "Jesus is not here referring to the Gentiles, as, since Eusebius' time, many ... have supposed, but, as the use of the singular already plainly indicates, to the whole of the future subjects of the kingdom of the Messiah, conceived of as one people, which will therefore consist of Jews and Gentiles, [the] new Messianic people of God",[14] the "holy nation" addressed as such in 1 Peter 2:9.