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Sit at My Right Hand

Psalm 110:1–3

A Psalm of David.

1 The Lord says to my lord:

“Sit at my right hand,

till I make your enemies your footstool.”

2 The Lord sends forth from Zion

your mighty sceptre.

Rule in the midst of your foes!

3 Your people will offer themselves freely

on the day you lead your host

upon the holy mountains.

From the womb of the morning

like dew your youth will come to you.

This psalm is very different in nature from most we have looked at. We have seen psalms that brought the past up to date at the time of writing. This psalm takes the distant time of David and makes it speak for a future yet to come. In a word, Ps. 110 is “Messianic” in its whole emphasis. Let us note these points about it:

(1) The Hebrew of it is unusually difficult. So it is wrong to be completely dogmatic about what it is saying. (2) On the other hand, verses 1 and 4 particularly were dogmatically used by the early Christian Church. (3) The verb in the phrase The Lord says occurs in only one other place in the psalms, at Ps. 36:1. It is a strange word, used much by the great prophets in the familiar phrase in English: “Thus saith the Lord”. But modern translations seek to show the strange quality of the word by rendering it as “Oracle of the Lord”. The word is found at Gen. 22:16 where the solemnity of God’s oath is emphasized. Evidently the author of the psalm believed he had been given a revelation from God; consequently he speaks as if he were a prophet himself, like Amos.

Verses 1–3, Oracle I. God addresses the king through the mouth of a cultic prophet at the great enthronement festival. He says: “Yahweh reveals his Word to my master”, meaning the king. The phrase Sit at my right hand goes right back in time to ancient Egyptian usage where the reigning Pharaoh honours his own son with these very words. The son is placed where he can be the Pharaoh’s right arm, that is, where he can be his father’s executive. So here God calls David (1) to the place of honour, and (2) to be his viceroy on earth. (See 1 Chron. 29:23; at 1 Kings 2:19 King Solomon interestingly places his mother in this position of honour.)

Then God adds: till I “annihilate all evil”, the meaning of till I make your enemies your footstool. But how is this to take place? The Lord (Yahweh) will send forth, or “stretch out”, from Zion (which God has already made into his own footstool—Ps. 99:5) your mighty sceptre. David then raises his sceptre, his symbol of office, in his right hand, though of course it is God who empowers his arm to move (1 Sam. 2:10). Thus it is God who gives the command: Rule in the midst of your foes, not “over” them, let us note, but despite the fact that your foes are all around you. Rule in confidence, for I am the strength of your arm.

The Hebrew of verse 3 is almost impossible. But following upon the command of verse 2 it seems to mean: “Go forth to battle; your people will volunteer freely under your leadership in holy array” (RSV ftn). This is to be a Messianic war against the powers of evil. The “holy array” is David’s army of ordinary folk, but now seen in the light of God’s transcendent purpose for them, and doing God’s holy will. (If the reading is upon the holy mountains, with RSV, then the reference is to the hills around the Holy City where the army will assemble.) So we have a beautiful poetic picture of the young men of Judah leaving their homes, with the dew of the dawn upon their brows, all flocking to follow their king. We are reminded of the Children’s Crusade in Europe in the 13th century, for it too was composed of idealistic young folk. Clearly this psalm was not written for a David who was weak-kneed. It was written for strong young men who were to follow their strong young leader into action in his great divine crusade.

The quotation of the first verse of this psalm in Mark 12:36 shows that is was understood by Jesus as describing his own life and mission. We should not take too seriously the typically “rabbinic” way in which Jesus argues that since David is the author, someone other than David (himself of course!) must be meant by “my lord”. The people listening would as good Jews get his point right away, which is that he, Jesus, was the new Messianic “king” of Israel. And if they knew the psalm well, they would realize that they were meant to respond to Jesus’ invitation to them to “offer themselves freely” as soldiers in his army.

A Priest for Ever

Psalm 110:4–7

4 The Lord has sworn

and will not change his mind,

“You are a priest for ever

after the order of Melchizedek.”

5 The Lord is at your right hand;

he will shatter kings on the day of his wrath.

6 He will execute judgment among the nations,

filling them with corpses;

he will shatter chiefs

over the wide earth.

7 He will drink from the brook by the way;

therefore he will lift up his head.

Verse 4, Oracle II. Before the Exile the king sometimes acted as “chief priest”. This psalm, then, is historically accurate in giving the title of priest to the reigning monarch (see also 2 Sam. 6:14). But God hails him as priest for ever. To understand this title we must go back to the giving of the Covenant as it is described in Exod. 19:6, when God’s people as a whole were called by God to be a kingdom of priests. We can therefore now put the two oracles together, and find that the king, with his host of warriors, is to be God’s intermediary to the nations of the earth. We recall the words of Dan. 7:27: “The kingdom (of priests)…shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High; their kingdom shall be an everlasting kingdom.” So we note next that Oracle II is just as absolute a divine oracle as is Oracle I. The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind, “You are a priest for ever”. It would be foolish to think of the one addressed going on and on being a priest. Rather the meaning is that, since God himself is for ever, then this king-priest and his successors will be priest to the eternal God, uniquely, mediating God’s eternal plan.

After the order of Melchizedek, or rather, “as we see in the case of Melchizedek”. This strange man appears only in Gen. 14:17–20. There we read that (a) he was priest of the Most High God, a title later given to Israel’s God (e.g. Ps. 46:4). (b) He was king of Salem, the name then given to Jerusalem. (c) Although not a member of the people of God himself, this unique priest-king blessed the “father” of that people, viz. Abraham, and so acted as an intermediary between God and all Israel who were descended from Abraham. (d) His name Melchizedek, meaning literally “The righteous One is my king”, was later understood to mean “King of righteousness”.

It is not surprising that a man with such titles was linked, as in this psalm, with the Davidic king ruling from Jerusalem, or that later on he was seen by the early Christians as a “type” or prefiguration of Jesus Christ. See Hebrews ch. 7 where he is also called “King of peace” (for salem/shalom). In that chapter it is emphasized that he preceded the Levitical priesthood of the OT, and that even Abraham, the first of the chosen people, bowed down before him and paid tithes to him and received his blessing. The chapter then goes on to picture Jesus as the only ideal and eternal High Priest, offering the perfect sacrifice for all mankind.

Verses 5–7, The Holy War. The Day of the Lord was a commonly held idea in OT times. “Day”, we recall, signified God’s special “moment” when he would act—to save, as the ordinary man supposed; and so it was something like the D-Day to which the Allies looked forward during World War II. “No,” declared Amos, however. The Day of the Lord is darkness and not light (Amos 5:18). In fact it is to be a Day of Judgment. Salvation can come to this world only through judgment, which we can think of in terms of darkness. This way of thinking carried right on into the NT. For example, when God pronounced judgment on the world before its salvation, and so before the Resurrection, the bystanders at the Cross discovered they were overcome by a mysterious darkness (Mark 15:33). In Amos again, note how the “resurrection” of the booth of David also takes place only following the coming judgment (Amos 9:11). Then again, the “resurrection” of Israel from Babylon’s “grave” (Ezek. 37:1–14) could take place only after the judgment had fallen upon God’s people when Nebuchadnezzar destroyed both the city and the people.

The Day of Judgment in this psalm is a Day of Battle, the day when God the Warrior, the Lord of hosts will overwhelm the powers of evil and only then bring forth from the debacle a whole newness of life and of universal salvation. At Acts 4:24–28 both Peter and John announce the meaning of God’s act of judgment in the Cross to the Jewish authorities, and they use words from a similar “royal psalm” (Ps. 2). John the Baptist, however, because he flourished before the crucifixion took place, had to recognize that all this was yet to happen in the person of Jesus if the OT was in any way to be fulfilled (Matt. 3:10).

The Lord is at your right hand. There is a nice contrast with verse 1, where it was the priest-king who was to be seated at the Lord’s right hand. Clearly we are meant to see that any action of the Messianic king is an action of God. This action is to meet the opposing powers of evil head on, and to make them serve his plan. In Rev. 6 power was given (that is, by God) to the enemy. Nowhere in either the OT or the NT is the initiative in the war ever taken away from God (and the Lamb); so that in the Book of Revelation even chaos can be understood to be the result of the wrath of the Lamb. No wonder these events that our psalm deals with, and which are shown forth in similar “picture theology” in the Book of Revelation, should be accompanied by songs of praise in heaven. That is why Ps. 110 is part of the songs of praise of the Second Temple.

The reference in verse 7 may be to Gideon’s supreme confidence that it was God who would win the battle he had to face, not his puny little army of three hundred men (Judg. 7:19–22). For it happened that because of his complete trust, not in himself but in God, God lifted up his head. The suppliant in those days was expected to lie on his face before an eastern monarch, in fear and trembling.

But if the monarch saw fit to accept the suppliant’s plea, he bent down, placed his hand under the poor man’s chin, and lifted up his head. So too will God, says this psalm, completely justify the faith of his priestly king (see for its ultimate meaning 1 Cor. 15:25–27). [1]

[1] Knight, George A. F. (2001). Psalms Daily Study Bible, Vol. 2, pp. 179–184. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press.