Jesus asked how the Messiah could be David’s Son when David himself called Him “my Lord.” The Pharisees knew the promise of a king from David’s family, but Jesus required them to account for that king’s authority over David. Psalm 110 and the apostles’ teaching answer that question by identifying the Savior we worship as both our King and our eternal Priest.
The Question Jesus Wanted His Hearers to Face
God had promised David a royal house and an everlasting throne. The prophets looked for a righteous Branch from his line, and the New Testament introduces Jesus Christ as the Son of David. Psalm 110 adds something that must be understood alongside those promises:
The LORD said to my Lord, “Sit at My right hand, Till I make Your enemies Your footstool.”
David speaks of someone he calls his Lord, whom the LORD invites to sit at His right hand. Although David was Israel’s anointed king, he acknowledged a Lord above himself. Jesus used those words to challenge an incomplete understanding of the Messiah.
During His public confrontations in Jerusalem, Jesus asked the gathered Pharisees a question about the Christ, God’s promised Messiah:
While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, saying, “What do you think about the Christ? Whose Son is He?” They said to Him, “The Son of David.”
Their answer agreed with God’s promise about David’s family. Jesus then asked them to explain what David had said under the Spirit’s inspiration:
He said to them, “How then does David in the Spirit call Him ‘Lord,’ saying: ‘The LORD said to my Lord, “Sit at My right hand, Till I make Your enemies Your footstool”‘? If David then calls Him ‘Lord,’ how is He his Son?”
Jesus was not denying that the Messiah would be David’s descendant. He was asking how that descendant could also be the Lord David acknowledged. The Messiah’s family line alone could not explain David’s words. The Pharisees had identified His family, but had not accounted for who He was.
Matthew records that no one could answer Him a word. The question was more searching than a clever exchange in a debate: Jesus was directing them to recognize the One standing before them. He was the promised Son of David and the Lord of whom David had spoken.
David’s Lord in Psalm 110
The psalm’s heading identifies it as “A Psalm of David,” and Jesus says David spoke “in the Spirit.” I receive it as David’s inspired prophecy. Jesus’ argument depends on David being the speaker who calls the Messiah his Lord; changing the speaker changes the question He asked.
The psalm begins with the invitation to sit at the LORD’s right hand. It goes on to describe the rod of the King’s strength extending from Zion, His rule among His enemies, and His people offering themselves willingly. Verse 4 declares Him a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek. The closing judgment and victory complete the description of a King-Priest whose authority reaches beyond David’s own reign.
The two expressions translated as Lord in the opening verse are different in Hebrew. English Bibles commonly print God’s covenant name, YHWH, as “LORD” in small capitals. The expression la’adoni means “to my lord.” It acknowledges someone’s authority over the speaker, and it is not another occurrence of the covenant name.
Recognizing that difference does not require us to deny Christ’s deity. Neither should we pretend that the second expression is YHWH in order to defend Christ’s deity. The question is who David’s Lord is, what God promises Him in the psalm, and how Jesus and the apostles identify Him. A word that can address a human superior does not establish that this particular Lord is merely human.
The New Testament identifies the LORD who gives the invitation as the Father, and David’s Lord as the Son. They are distinct Persons, and the Son receives heavenly honor and rule. This agrees with the wider teaching of the Trinity: the one God eternally exists as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, three distinct Persons. Psalm 110 contributes to that witness without containing every part of the doctrine in one sentence. The studies on the deity of Jesus and the Trinity examine the fuller biblical grounds.
The Son of David Is the Son of God
Gabriel’s announcement to Mary shows what Jesus’ descent from David would mean for the kingdom promise:
He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David.
And He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of His kingdom there will be no end.
Gabriel’s words identify Jesus’ kingdom with God’s promises to David and His people Israel. Jesus truly entered David’s line and will fulfill what God promised concerning that kingdom. The study on the Davidic Covenant follows those promises in greater detail.
His birth into that family was not the beginning of His existence. The eternal Son became flesh, taking a complete human nature without ceasing to be God. He is fully God and fully man. As man, He is David’s descendant; as the eternal Son, He is David’s Lord. His humanity was real, and His divine identity was not an honor He acquired later.
He lived without sin and willingly gave Himself to be slain as the perfect sacrifice for our sins. Wicked men inflicted the bodily suffering and crucifixion He endured. He shed His innocent blood and completed His saving sacrifice through His death, before He was buried and rose bodily from the dead. The One now seated at the Father’s right hand is that same incarnate Son.
The New Testament returns to Psalm 110 to explain who Jesus is. David’s Son receives a throne, but He is also David’s Lord, greater than the angels and appointed to a priesthood that never ends. We need both His true humanity and His eternal deity to understand the King the apostles proclaimed.
The Exalted King the Apostles Preached
The right hand is the place of highest honor and authority. Sitting there does not mean the Messiah has become inactive. Psalm 110:2 describes His rule:
The LORD shall send the rod of Your strength out of Zion. Rule in the midst of Your enemies!
After His resurrection and ascension, Jesus took His place at the Father’s right hand. His enemies still oppose Him, but their resistance does not call His enthronement into doubt. He rules now, and the Father will fulfill His promise to place every enemy under His feet. The study on post-resurrection Jesus and His ascension follows His exaltation in more detail.
At Pentecost, Peter named Jesus as the One who fulfilled the psalm. He appealed both to the apostles’ witness of the resurrection and to the outpouring of the Spirit his hearers had just seen:
This Jesus God has raised up, of which we are all witnesses. Therefore being exalted to the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He poured out this which you now see and hear.
For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he says himself: “The LORD said to my Lord, ‘Sit at My right hand, Till I make Your enemies Your footstool.'”
David had not ascended to heaven and taken the place described in his own prophecy. Jesus had risen and been exalted there, and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit testified to His exaltation. Peter therefore told the house of Israel that God had made the Jesus they crucified both Lord and Christ. His conclusion concerned the same man they had rejected.
That declaration did not mean Jesus had just become divine. Peter was proclaiming His vindication and enthronement as Messiah. The eternal Son who had humbled Himself and died was now publicly proclaimed as the risen Lord. His exaltation cannot be detached from the cross or used to leave His saving death behind.
Paul also returns to the psalm in Hebrews, which I believe he wrote. Hebrews 1 uses its promise to distinguish the Son from every created angel:
But to which of the angels has He ever said: “Sit at My right hand, Till I make Your enemies Your footstool”?
God did not invite an angel to occupy that place. Hebrews describes the Son as the brightness of God’s glory and the express image of His person, then says that after purging our sins He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high. The Son shares His Father’s glory and receives honor above every created servant.
His present exaltation also gives us confidence about His future victory. In 1 Corinthians 15:25–26, Paul explains that Christ must reign until all His enemies are under His feet, with death the last enemy destroyed. The promise therefore reaches beyond the conversion of individual believers to the defeat of everything opposed to God.
I read that promise together with Scripture’s teaching about Christ’s bodily return. A future Tribulation will be followed by His return and literal thousand-year reign. Psalm 110 gives us the promise of the King’s triumph, while the wider prophetic passages explain that future fulfillment. The hostility we see now cannot prevent Him from bringing all things into righteous order.
A Priest Forever After the Order of Melchizedek
The same psalm that seats the Messiah beside the Father also appoints Him to a priesthood:
The LORD has sworn And will not relent, “You are a priest forever According to the order of Melchizedek.”
Jesus descended from Judah according to the flesh. The priests under the Law came from Levi, but the LORD appointed Jesus by oath to an order older and greater than Aaron’s. Hebrews explains that He serves by the power of an endless life, so death cannot end His ministry as it ended the service of the mortal priests.
Genesis 14 introduces Melchizedek as king of Salem and priest of God Most High. Hebrews explains his name in connection with righteousness and his kingship in connection with peace. It also draws attention to his blessing Abraham and receiving tithes from him. The priest who blessed Abraham held a position greater than the patriarch who received the blessing. The absence of a recorded genealogy in Genesis also serves Hebrews’ argument.
I understand Melchizedek as a Christophany, an appearance of the eternal Son before He took on human flesh, rather than an otherwise unknown Canaanite priest. The study on Melchizedek works through the reasons at length. Here, Psalm 110 gives the Messiah a royal priesthood joined with righteousness and peace, one that endures forever.
Hebrews also explains why His seated position gives us confidence in His sacrifice. The old covenant priests stood ministering repeatedly because their offerings could not finally take away sins. Christ offered Himself once for all and sat down at the Father’s right hand. His sacrifice needs no repetition. The blood He shed and the death He willingly endured are sufficient for the salvation He accomplished.
His completed sacrifice does not mean His priestly ministry has ended. He lives forever and intercedes for His people, representing them before God. Hebrews 7:25 explains that He is able to save completely those who come to God through Him because He always lives to intercede for them. David’s Lord is the King whose enemies will be subdued and the Priest through whom His people have access to God.
Reading Psalm 110 Carefully and Living Under Its King
Some readers limit Psalm 110 to David or Solomon. The royal setting helps explain its language, but that reading cannot account for the way Jesus and the apostles use it. Jesus identifies David as the speaker and the Christ as David’s Lord. Peter applies the heavenly enthronement to the risen Jesus, and Hebrews applies the permanent priesthood to Him. We need to follow that inspired interpretation instead of confining the promise to one generation of earthly kings.
Jesus’ use of the passage teaches me to take authorship, wording, and context seriously. If I detach an expression from the rest of the passage because it suits my argument, I am no longer reading it the way He did. Jesus paid attention to David’s words because David spoke by the Holy Spirit. I should be willing to correct my explanation when the text says something more precise than I have claimed.
Those words also give us reason to worship Christ. The Son is not a lesser spiritual being whose honor competes with the Father’s. Father and Son are distinct Persons within the one Godhead, and the Father is glorified in the Son. Receiving Jesus as David’s Lord honors the identity and authority the Father Himself declares.
When people mock Christ or oppose His people, I need to remember that the psalm describes Him ruling in the midst of enemies. Their resistance has not displaced Him from His throne. We may find their visible power intimidating, but our confidence rests in the King the Father has enthroned and the victory He has promised.
The King’s priesthood also gives me reason to approach Him instead of keeping my distance in fear. He has already offered the sacrifice for sin and lives to intercede for those who come to God through Him. I can trust His finished work and seek His help with confidence. Obedience to this King grows from reliance on the Savior who brings us to God.
My Final Thoughts
Jesus’ question requires us to confess more than the Messiah’s descent from David. The Son of David is David’s eternal Lord, who died for our sins and rose bodily. He now sits at the Father’s right hand and serves as Priest forever. I want my worship, trust, and obedience to follow what Scripture says about Him: our Savior reigns, His sacrifice is complete, and the enemies who resist Him will not overturn His kingdom.