Biblion Bible Commentary
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Sit at My Right Hand
Psalms 110:1-7
1 A Psalm by David. Yahweh says to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool for your feet.” · WEB
Seven verses quoted in the New Testament more than any other passage in the Old, and a priest from before Aaron.
Yahweh says to my Lord, "Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool for your feet" Psalms 110:1.
The most quoted Old Testament verse in the New Testament. Two speakers are named, and the difficulty is in the second: David calls someone my Lord, and that person is invited to sit beside God.
Jesus puts the problem to the Pharisees himself. If David calls the Messiah Lord, how is he his son? Matthew 22:44–45 — and the account records that nobody could answer him. The question is not rhetorical trickery; it is the psalm's own puzzle, and it has one solution.
Peter quotes the verse at Pentecost to prove the ascension Acts 2:34–35; Stephen sees the position occupied Acts 7:56; the letter to the Hebrews returns to it four times. Sit is the operative word there — a priest who has finished stays seated, and no Levitical priest ever sat down in the sanctuary Hebrews 10:11–12.
Your people offer themselves willingly in the day of your power Psalms 110:3.
The army in this psalm is a volunteer force. Whatever the conquest described here is, nobody is conscripted into it.
Yahweh has sworn, and will not change his mind: "You are a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek" Psalms 110:4.
The second great claim, and it is impossible under the law. Kings came from Judah and priests from Levi, and the two offices could not be held by one man — a king who touched the incense altar was struck with leprosy 2 Chronicles 26:19.
So the psalm reaches back past Levi altogether, to a priest-king who met Abraham with bread and wine and blessed him, four hundred years before Aaron existed Genesis 14:18. The letter to the Hebrews spends four chapters on the implication: Melchizedek's priesthood has no recorded beginning, no recorded end, and no successor, and Abraham — with Levi still unborn in him — paid it tithes Hebrews 7:9–10. A priesthood older than the law and sworn to by oath is not superseded by the law.
The Lord is at your right hand. He will crush kings in the day of his wrath Psalms 110:5.
The positions have reversed from verse one, which is the psalm's way of saying the two are not being ranked.
He will drink of the brook on the way; therefore he will lift up his head Psalms 110:7.
The last verse is domestic and strange after the kings and the corpses: a man stopping at a stream mid-pursuit, drinking, and going on. Whatever else this figure is, the psalm's final image of him is a traveler who needs water.
settled What this mark means