This song refers to a comment Jesus made during what is called His "Triumphal Entry" into Jerusalem.
Dr. David Jeremiah, in his book Christ's Death and Resurrection, observes that since this was the Passover season, there were probably two million people in and around Jerusalem. The roads into the city were jammed with families bringing their sacrificial lambs.
In Exodus 12, Jews were instructed to sacrifice a lamb to commemorate the "passing over" of the death angel in Egypt. (Jewish Passover celebrates death "passing over" the Hebrew slaves in Egypt. God had told them to sacrifice an unblemished lamb and put blood on the doorposts. Death passed over houses marked with the lamb's blood.) The very day Jesus entered the city, many of those sacrificial sheep were being driven into the city.
Dr. Jeremiah points out that in previous events, Jesus had healed people but instructed them to tell no one. He had stayed away from the limelight. Yet now, Jesus was being led into the city by a crowd so big that observers were asking "Who is this?" Even the disciples (whom Jesus had told exactly what was going to happen) were confused and scattered.
In Luke 19:36-40, Jesus is heading toward Jerusalem. He knows that many in the city want Him dead and are looking for Him. As He approaches, crowds of His followers are praising Him, spreading their cloaks out on the road ahead of Him, and ushering Him into the city as if He were a king or victorious military leader.
As they reached the place where the road started down from the Mount of Olives, all of His followers began to shout and sing as they walked along, praising God for all the wonderful miracles they had seen."
"Bless the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in highest heaven!"
But some of the Pharisees among the crowd said, "Teacher, rebuke your followers for saying things like that!" He replied, "If they kept quiet, the stones along the road would burst into cheers!" (New Living Translation)
Jesus was very familiar with "the law and the prophets". The prophet writer of the book of Habakkuk addresses the fact that evil and injustice seem to have the upper hand in this world. In the second chapter (2:9-11), Habakkuk speaks to people who follow their own desires, "take care of number one", and seek to get rich by any means necessary. It is directed at the Babylonians who took special pride in using subjugated peoples and stolen building materials in their construction projects, but it contains lasting truth:
"How terrible for you who get rich by unjust means! You believe your wealth will buy security, putting your families beyond the reach of danger. But by the murders you committed, you have shamed your name and forfeited your lives. The very stones in the walls of your houses cry out against you, and the beams in the ceilings echo the complaint." (New Living Translation)
The imagery signifies actual and ultimate truth; truth that is so plain and vital that even the rocks in the walls cry out at the injustices done. Likewise, had Christ's followers not praised Him, the rocks themselves would cry out at the injustice and take up the praise of the approaching LORD. The point is not rocks producing sounds but Jesus being absolutely worthy of praise. He would not have made such a statement if He had simply been a good teacher. As C. S. Lewis wrote in his book Mere Christianity, either Jesus was a liar, a lunatic, or He was who He said He was:
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm really ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say.
A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic -- on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg - or else he would be the Devil of Hell.
You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come up with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), in Mere Christianity
Copyright Macmillan Publishing Company
ISBN 0-02-086830-8