Daughter of Zion (and Her King) —

Daughter of Zion is a phrase used in the Bible about 30 times[1] and all but two of these occurrences are in the Old Testament. The first time this phrase is used is in 2 Kings 19:21 while the final occurrence is found in John 12:15 though it appears most frequently in the books of the prophets—in particular Isaiah, Micah, Zephaniah, Zechariah, and Jeremiah (along with his book of Lamentations which uses this phrase a whopping eight times in only five chapters! This is second only to Isaiah who has nine occurrences).

Significantly, the only two New Testament occurrences which are in Matthew 21:5 and John 12:15 are both quoting Zechariah 9:9 and connect his messianic prophecy regarding the daughter of Zion’s “King” who comes upon a colt, to Jesus of Nazareth. And while Matthew and John don’t leave us guessing who the Messiah is, the question that remains is, who is the daughter of Zion? Before we can know who the daughter is we first need to know what Zion is. The name Zion first appears in 2 Samuel 5 and, according to this passage, was the name of the original mountain fortress that King David conquered and took from the Jebusites after he became king. So, if Zion is the mountain fortress, then whos is Zion’s daughter? Well, back in those times it was customary to refer to the surrounding cities and suburbs of the main fortress or city as daughters. And the city that grew around Mt. Zion was Jerusalem. So Jerusalem is the daughter of Zion.

However, as the Bible goes on to explain, following the reign of David’s son Solomon, the kingdom of Israel split. Ten of the twelve tribes of Israel became Northern Israel (referred to as simply Israel) and the two remaining tribes of Judah and Benjamin became Southern Israel (referred to as Judah) with Jerusalem as its capital city. And so, when the Bible refers to the daughter of Zion it is often not only referring to Jerusalem but the whole Southern Kingdom of Judah since Jerusalem is the capital city and the seat of its power. We often do the same thing with modern kingdoms as well. For example, we could refer to America as simply Washington since that is its capital city and the seat of its power. Likewise, Canada could be simply addressed as Ottawa. So daughter of Zion refers to Jerusalem and by extension all of southern Israel. Significantly, the daughter of Zion miraculously still exists to this day and as Zechariah prophesied long ago, she will one day look upon Jesus—the one whom they pierced—and mourn and finally accept Him as their true Lord and Saviour!