This question had not been asked yet. Jesus spoke it ahead of time so His disciples would be ready for it. Two strangers untying a colt that was not theirs would naturally draw a challenge. Gill says it "would be strange if they should not say something to them, especially the owners of it," and he fills out the asker's thought: "Why do ye untie the ass, and attempt to carry it away, when it is none of your own".

Jesus gave the disciples their answer before they ever heard the question: "say ye that the Lord hath need of him."

Jesus Himself supplied the answer: "the Lord hath need of him; and straightway he will send him hither." Everything happened as He said. The disciples "found the colt tied by the door without in a place where two ways met" (Mark 11:4). Certain of them that stood there asked, "What do ye, loosing the colt?" (Mark 11:5). The disciples "said unto them even as Jesus had commanded: and they let them go" (Mark 11:6). They brought the colt to Jesus, cast their garments on him, "and he sat upon him" (Mark 11:7).

Bethphage and Bethany were villages on the mount of Olives, just outside Jerusalem (Mark 11:1). Barnes places them on the eastern slope of the mountain.

"The Lord" translates Kyrios. Gill says it looks as if this title "was what Jesus was well known by," or else that the owners believed in Christ, which he calls "not improbable." Barnes thinks the owners "were probably acquainted with the miracles of Jesus and favorably disposed toward him."

The last clause reads differently in different Greek texts. In the Textus Receptus behind the KJV, "he will send him hither" means the owner will send the colt. Many other Greek texts add palin, "again" or "back," so the ESV reads that the Lord "will send it back here immediately," a promise that Jesus would return the colt.

Jesus knew the question before anyone asked it. He knew where the colt would be, that it had never been ridden (Mark 11:2), and what the people standing by would say. The scene shows the Lord preparing His own entry into Jerusalem down to the smallest detail.

It also shows His humility. The One whom His disciples call "the Lord" borrows a young colt. Matthew Henry writes, "Christ went upon the water in a borrowed boat, ate the passover in a borrowed chamber, was buried in a borrowed sepulchre, and here rode on a borrowed ass." Barnes, commenting on Matthew's account, links the colt to Zechariah 9:9, where Zion's King comes "lowly, and riding upon an ass," and notes that a horse was sometimes "an emblem of war; on a mule and an ass the emblem of peace."