Psalm 110
Notes
This psalm is one of the most cited OT texts in the NT, with quotations or allusions appearing in the Gospels, Acts, the Pauline epistles, Hebrews, and the Petrine epistles.
It, along with Ps 118, is by far the most quoted psalm in the NT (Mt 22:44; 26:64; Mk 12:36; 14:62; Lk 20:42, 43; 22:69; Ac 2:34, 35; Heb 1:13; 5:6; 7:17, 21; 10:13).
it became the psalm most quoted in the New Testament, and verse 1 the most quoted verse.
Psalm 110 is entirely about a divine king who has been installed at the right hand of God in heaven and who is presently engaged in extending his spiritual rule throughout the whole earth. It tells us that this divine Messiah is also a priest, performing priestly functions, and that additionally he is a judge who at the end of time will execute a final judgment on the nations and rulers of this earth.
Walter Chantry, a contemporary Baptist preacher, also sees Psalm 110 as being exclusively about Christ. He divides it into four parts, namely, the powerful reign of Christ (v. 1), the spiritual reign of Christ (vv. 2–3), the priestly reign of Christ (v. 4), and the judicial reign of Christ (vv. 5–7).
My right hand. God the Father invited God the Son in His ascension to sit at the place of honor in the heavenly throne room (cf. Ac. 2:22–36; Heb 10:10–12).
Your enemies a footstool. Footstool was an ancient Near Eastern picture of absolute victory portraying the idea that one’s enemy was now underfoot (cf. Pss 8:6, 7; 47:3; Is 66:1; 1Co 15:27). This anticipates Christ’s Second Advent (cf. Rev 19:11–21) as a conquering king (cf. Heb 10:13).
110:2 Your strong scepter. From the human side, the ancestral staff of Judah is in view (cf. Ge 49:10). From the divine side, the rod of iron by which King Jesus will subdue the earth is intended (cf. Ps 2:9).
Zion. God intends to install His ultimate earthly king in Jerusalem (the SW side is Zion; cf. Ps 132:13–18). The earthly Zion (cf. Ps 2:6; Is 59:20) is in view, not the heavenly Zion because 1) there are no enemies in heaven, and 2) none of the activities in vv. 5–7 will take place in heaven.
1. “In the midst of your enemies.” If this psalm were about a mere earthly king, it would never speak of ruling “in the midst of” enemies. That is not how earthly kings rule. They make boundaries; defend and extend their frontiers; and confront, fight, and overpower enemies. Here is a king who rules in the midst of his enemies. This can only mean that his is a spiritual rule that infiltrates the hostile powers of this world in a nearly invisible fashion. Moreover, it is a rule that he exerts indirectly, as it were, not by coming in power himself (though he will also do that in judgment at the end of time) but through his people, the church.
This verse meant a great deal to Martin Luther because of the nature of his battles at the time of the Reformation. At one point, when he was sick, he praised the psalm, saying, “If I were well, I would endeavor to make a commentary on it.” Luther did get well and in time did write a commentary on Psalm 110 that ran to 120 pages. In it he said, “We must live in the midst of Christ’s enemies.… However, it is not the meaning of this verse that we physically resist our enemies, which is part of the thinking of the anabaptists and other rebels. In his kingdom Christ has nothing to do with secular power and government. Nor are we Christians able to defeat and subdue the devil and the world by means of physical power or weapons.” No, said Luther. We are to fight for Christ by suffering, by faith, and by the preaching of God’s Word.
The church has always gotten into deep trouble when it has tried to Christianize society, as if the secular world could be made Christian. From time to time believers suppose they can impose their idea of a just society on other people by enacting laws and proscribing civil penalties for those who break them. This is not our calling. Paul pointed out the right way when he wrote to the Corinthians, “Though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds” (2 Cor. 10:3–4).
What are our weapons? First, participation. Christians need to participate in secular life rather than merely shoot at secular people and what secular people are doing from the sidelines. Participation is implied in Paul’s words “though we live in the world” and in the psalm’s equivalent expression “in the midst of your enemies.” Second, persuasion. Persuasion is opposed to coercion. Informed by God’s Word, Christians must endeavor to persuade others of the truth. The verses from 2 Corinthians 10 that I cited earlier teach this by going on to say, “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (v. 5). Third, prayer. We pray because we know that even with the best of scripturally informed arguments, without God’s specific supernatural intervention the world will neither understand nor heed what we are saying.
Walter Chantry says rightly that the world is “in desperate need of a spiritual church using spiritual weapons to fight a spiritual war, under the spiritual reign of Christ.”
110:5 Your right hand. The roles have here reversed—the Father now stands at the right hand of the Son. This pictures the Father supplying the needs of the Son (cf. Pss 16:8; 109:31; Is 41:13). The Father provides the defeat of His enemies on earth so that His Son can fulfill God’s land and nation promises to Abraham (Ge 12:1, 2) and kingship promise to David (2Sa 7:12, 13, 16).
