Scripture Daily

Context No. 43 of 4322 · Psalms

Context · Reflection

Psalms 110:1-7: in context

1The LORD says to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool for your feet.” 2The LORD will send out the rod of your strength out of Zion. Rule among your enemies. 3Your people offer themselves willingly in the day of your power, in holy array. Out of the womb of the morning, you have the dew of your youth. 4The LORD has sworn, and will not change his mind: “You are a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek.” 5The Lord is at your right hand. He will crush kings in the day of his wrath. 6He will judge among the nations. He will heap up dead bodies. He will crush the ruler of the whole earth. 7He will drink of the brook on the way; therefore he will lift up his head.

This short psalm became the most quoted Old Testament passage in the New Testament, drawn on roughly thirty times. It is a coronation poem, spoken over a king in Jerusalem, and its first line is a small puzzle in English. The LORD says to my Lord: the first is God's own name, the second is the king. God invites the king to sit at his right hand while his enemies are put under his feet.

Then comes the line no other passage in the Hebrew Bible offers. The LORD has sworn and will not change his mind: you are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek. Melchizedek appears for three verses in Genesis 14, the king of Salem who brings out bread and wine and blesses Abraham, with no ancestry and no successor named. Israel's priests came from one tribe by descent, and its kings from another. This line hands the king a priesthood from neither, older than both.

Jesus quotes the first verse to ask the Pharisees how the Messiah can be David's son if David calls him Lord (Matthew 22:41-45). The letter to the Hebrews builds its whole argument for Christ's priesthood on verse four. A psalm sung at a coronation kept asking a question the coronations could not answer. What am I still waiting for that I have already been given words for?

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