Priest-king forever: the LORD speaks to David's Lord

Psalm 110 is seven verses long and is the Old Testament text most often quoted or echoed in the New Testament. The title ascribes it to David, and it was placed in Book V of the Psalter, among the late collections that look toward the restored monarchy. It belongs to the group called royal psalms, which concern the king of Israel (Psalms 2, 18, 20, 21, 45, 72, 89, 101, 132 and 144 are others). The poem is an oracle: it records what God said to the king.

The date and the speaker are debated. Many readers, including most conservative scholars and, on the evidence of the Gospels, Jesus and his hearers, take David as the author. In Mark 12:36 Jesus says that David spoke 'by the Holy Spirit' and calls the first line David's own words. Many critical scholars treat the psalm as a court composition from the early monarchy, spoken by a prophet or priest at the enthronement of a Davidic king in Jerusalem, and understand the title 'of David' as 'for' or 'belonging to the line of' David. On that view 'my lord' in verse 1 is the reigning king. Both groups agree that the psalm was written for the throne in Zion and was sung there. Neither can show that it is later than the setting of the monarchy it assumes.

The hearers lived under a covenant that kept the two great offices apart. Kings came from Judah and priests from the family of Levi through Aaron. A king who tried to act as a priest was judged; Uzziah was struck with a skin disease for entering the temple to burn incense (2 Chronicles 26:16-21). Saul lost his kingdom after offering sacrifice himself (1 Samuel 13:8-14). The oath of verse 4, which makes a king a priest, was therefore a startling claim, and the Old Testament offered only one earlier figure who had held both offices: Melchizedek of Salem (Genesis 14:18-20).

The psalm is a royal oracle in Hebrew poetry. It has two speakers in the first four verses (God speaks in verses 1 and 4, and a prophetic voice describes the king in verses 2 and 3) and then, in verses 5 to 7, the voice turns to talk about the king in the third person. The rule for reading such poetry is to notice who speaks, who is spoken to, and how the images fit together. Here the images are of enthronement, war, priesthood and refreshment after victory.

Three features need care.

• The first is the opening line. In Hebrew it reads, in effect, 'a declaration of the LORD to my lord.'
• The first word for lord is the divine name YHWH, and the second is adoni, 'my lord', a title of honour for a human superior. The oracle is God's word to someone whom the speaker calls lord. In a purely historical reading that is the king. In the reading the New Testament adopts, it is the king who is also more than the king.
• The second feature is verse 3, which is among the hardest verses in the Psalter. The Hebrew words are rare, the grammar is unclear and translations differ widely, so conclusions here must be held loosely.
• The third is the oath in verse 4, which makes the psalm stand out among royal psalms: no other royal psalm gives the king priestly standing.

The class reads the psalm in two steps.

• First it asks what Israelites at a coronation would have heard: a promise that God himself would support the throne and its priestly duties.
• Second it asks how the New Testament, which cites the psalm repeatedly, says it was fulfilled. Where the psalm describes the king with titles that no ordinary son of David matched, that second step is as much the text's own direction as it is a later reading.

Verse 1

'The LORD said to my Lord: Sit at My right hand until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet.' The right hand was the place of highest honour next to the king (1 Kings 2:19). To sit there is to share the throne's authority. The footstool is a picture of conquest. Joshua had his captains place their feet on the necks of defeated kings (Joshua 10:24). Notice the word 'until'. God, not the king, will bring about the victory, and the king waits for it. The verse does not say the king is to fight now; it says that he is to be seated.

Verse 2

'The LORD extends Your mighty scepter from Zion.' Zion is the hill of Jerusalem, where God had set his king (Psalm 2:6). The scepter is a symbol of rule, and the LORD is the one who 'extends' it. The command 'Rule in the midst of Your enemies' shows that the reign is real before the enemies are subdued. The king reigns in a world that has not yet submitted.

Verse 3

The Hebrew is hard, and the BSB gives one defensible rendering: 'Your people shall be willing on Your day of battle.' The word translated 'willing' is nedavah, the word for a freewill offering, which suggests that the people come to the king as a gift. 'Holy splendor' may describe their dress as for a sacred procession, and the lines about the 'womb of the dawn' and the 'dew of Your youth' appear to promise the king a fresh, vigorous following like dew in the morning. The Greek Old Testament and the Latin Vulgate read the last lines differently, as God saying he begot the king 'before the morning star'. That reading was important for early Christian theologians, who connected it to the eternal generation of the Son. It rests on a different reading of the Hebrew, and most modern translations do not follow it.

Verse 4

'The LORD has sworn and will not change His mind: You are a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek.' The oath is the weightiest thing in the psalm, since God's oaths in the Old Testament mark his most solid promises, such as those to Abraham (Genesis 22:16) and to David (Psalm 89:35). 'Forever' means that the priesthood is permanent, not passed to successors by death. 'In the order of' translates a Hebrew phrase meaning 'in the manner of' or 'after the likeness of'. The name Melchizedek means 'king of righteousness' or 'my king is righteousness', and he was king of Salem, which Psalm 76:2 identifies with Zion. He blessed Abram in the name of God Most High and received a tenth of the spoils (Genesis 14:18-20). The line makes the Davidic king a priest in Melchizedek's line, in Jerusalem, not in Aaron's.

Verses 5 to 7. The scene changes to the battlefield. The statement 'The Lord is at Your right hand' may mean that the LORD stands at the king's right to defend him, or that the king sits at the Lord's right hand, as in verse 1. Either way the verses promise judgment on kings and nations: 'He will crush kings in the day of His wrath.' The grim words 'heaping up the dead' describe the aftermath of battle in the plain language of ancient war poetry. The final verse is quiet: the victor 'will drink from the brook by the road' and 'lift up His head'. The tired warrior is refreshed and his head is raised in triumph. Some suggest the Gihon spring, where Solomon was anointed (1 Kings 1:38-40), but the brook is not named.

Psalm 110 draws together three strands of the Old Testament: the royal promise to David, the priestly mediation of the sanctuary, and the hope of God's final victory over his enemies. In 2 Samuel 7 God promised David a house and a throne that would last forever. Here the promise is carried further. The king is invited to sit at God's right hand, which no earlier promise to a king had said, and is sworn a priest forever.

The psalm also bears on the doctrine of the divine rule. The kingdom is God's: it is his right hand, his scepter, his oath and his enemies. The Davidic king rules by sharing in God's own reign, not by his own strength. That is why the psalm keeps the king waiting for the victory that God will give.

The canonical placement helps. Psalm 2 opened the Psalter with God installing his king on Zion and promising him the nations. Psalm 110 comes late, after the Davidic monarchy had failed and the exile had come, and it keeps the promise alive. Many scholars see the Psalter's final shape as a message of hope that the line of David would yet be restored. Psalm 110 belongs with the later promises of Isaiah 11 and Zechariah 6:12-13. Zechariah speaks of a figure called the Branch who will build the temple and rule on his throne. The Hebrew of the passage is debated, but it joins throne and priesthood more closely than anything else in the prophets.

Psalm 110 is both promise and fulfillment. Jesus raised the question of its meaning himself. If David calls the Messiah 'Lord', how can the Messiah be only David's son (Mark 12:35-37; Matthew 22:41-46; Luke 20:41-44)? The point is not that Jesus denies he is David's son, but that the Christ is more than that. The same verse is quoted by Peter on the day of Pentecost, as proof that the risen Jesus has been exalted to God's right hand (Acts 2:33-35). Paul uses the 'until' of verse 1 for the present reign of Christ, which will end when all enemies are placed under his feet (1 Corinthians 15:25), and Ephesians 1:20-22 says the Father seated Christ at his right hand above every power. Hebrews 1:13 asks to which angel God ever said such a thing, and 10:12-13 says that Christ, having offered one sacrifice for sins, sat down and waits for his enemies to become his footstool. At his trial Jesus joined verse 1 with Daniel 7:13 when he told the high priest he would be seen seated at the right hand of Power (Matthew 26:64).

Verse 4 supports the longest argument on the subject. Hebrews 5:6, 7:17 and 7:21 quote it, and Hebrews 7 builds on it. Melchizedek had no recorded genealogy and no recorded successor, so he serves as a type of a priesthood not based on descent. Abraham tithed to him, which shows his priesthood is greater than Levi's, since Levi was in Abraham's loins (Hebrews 7:4-10). If perfection had been attainable through the Levitical priesthood, the writer argues, there would have been no need for another priest of a different order (7:11). Because Jesus lives forever, he holds his priesthood permanently and is able to save completely those who draw near to God through him (7:24-25). The connection is typological: the New Testament states it, and does not leave it to the reader.

The oracle also gathers the line of promise made to David. Because Jesus is both the Son of David and David's Lord, he is the king who sits at God's right hand and the priest who offered himself once for all (Hebrews 7:27).