Psalms 110:1
Psa 110:1 A Psalm of David. The LORD says to my Lord: "Sit at My right hand Until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet."
Psalms 110:1 is a unusual verse. It is referred to in the New Testament 23 times and is thus quoted much more often than any other verse from the Old Testament. It’s importance must not be overlooked. It is a psalm that tells us the relationship between God and Jesus.
Psalms 110:1 is a divine utterance although poorly translated if your version leaves out the original word "oracle". It is “the oracle of Yahweh” (the One God of the Hebrew Bible, of Judaism and New Testament Christianity) to David's lord who is the Messiah, spoken of here 1000 years before he came into existence in the womb of the Virgin Mary.
I want to bring attention to the fact that David's lord is not David's Lord. There should be no capital on the word "lord." The Revised Version of the Bible (1881) corrected the misleading error of other translations which put (and still wrongly put) a capitol L on lord in that verse. He is not Lord God, because the word in the inspired text is not the word for Deity, but the word for human superior- a human lord, not a Lord who is himself God, but a lord who is the supremely exalted, unique agent of the one God.
The Hebrew word for the status of the son of God and Psalms 110:1 is adoni. This word occurs 195 times in the Hebrew Bible and never refers to God. When God is described as "the Lord" (capital L) a different word, Adonai, appears. Thus the Bible makes a careful distinction between God and man. God is the Lord God (Adonai), or when his personal name is used, Yahweh, and Jesus is his unique, sinless, virginally conceived human son (adoni, my lord, Luke 1:43; 2:11). Adonai is found 449 times in the Old Testament and distinguishes the One God from all others. Adonai is not the word describing the son of God, Jesus, and Psalms 110:1. adoni appears 195 times and refers only to a human (or occasionally an angelic) lord, that is, someone who is not God. This should cut through a lot of complicated post Biblical argumentation and create a making which in subtle ways that secures the simple and most basic Biblical truth, that God is a single person and that the Messiah is the second Adam, "the Man Messiah" (1 Tim. 2:5).
Let's have a look at a few Old Testament verses that show us the clear distinction alluded to here. In Genesis 15:2, Abraham prays to God and says, "O LORD, God [Adonai Yahweh], what will you give me, since I am childless?" In another prayer Abraham's servant addresses God: "O LORD, God of my lord Abraham, please grant me success today" (Gen. 24:12). The second word for "my lord" here is adoni which according to any standard Hebrew lexicon means "Lord," "Master," or "owner." Another example is found in David's speech to his men after he had cut off the hem of King Saul's robe and his conscience bothered him: "So he said to his men, far be it from me because of the Lord [here the word is Yahweh, Lord God] that I should do this thing to my lord [adoni].”
The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, page 157. states… "The form Adoni (‘my lord’), a royal title (Sam. 29:8), is to be carefully distinguished from the divine title Adonai (‘Lord’) used of Yahweh. Adonai the special plural form [the divine title] distinguishes it from adoni [with short vowel] = ‘my lords.’” Hastings Dictionary of the Bible, vol. 3, page 137. States… “lord in the Old Testament is used to translate Adonai when applied to the Divine Being. The [Hebrew] word… has a suffix [with a special pointing] presumably for the sake of distinction... between divine and human appellative.” Wigram, The Englishman’s Hebrew and Chaldee Concordance of the Old Testament, p. 22. states…
“The form ‘to my lord,’ I’adoni, is never used in the Old Testament as a divine reference… the general excepted fact is that the masoretic pointing distinguishes divine reference (adonai) from human references (adoni).”
“The Hebrew Adonai exclusively denotes the God of Israel. It is attested about 450 times in the Old Testament…Adoni [is] addressed to human beings (Gen 44:7; Num 32:25; 2 Kings 2:19, etc.). We have to assume that the word Adonai received it’s special form to distinguish it from the secular use of adon [i.e. adoni]. The reason why [God is addressed] as Adonai [with long vowel] instead of the normal adon, adoni or adonai [short vowel] may have been to distinguish Yahweh from other gods and from other human Lord's.” from
Dictionary of deities and demons in the Bible, p. 531.
If David the Psalmist had expected the Messiah to be the Lord God he would not have used "my lord" (adoni), but the term used exclusively for the one God, Jehovah- Adonai. Unfortunately, though, many English translations which faithfully preserved this distinction elsewhere capitalize the second "lord" only in Psalms 110:1. This gives a misleading impression that the word is a divine title.
Occasionally, it will be objected that this distinction between Adonai and adoni was a late addition to the Hebrew text by the Mesorites around 600 to 700 AD and therefore is not reliable. This objection needs to be considered in the light of the fact that the Hebrew translators of the Septuagint (the LXX) around 250 B.C. recognize and carefully maintained this Hebrew distinction in their work. They never translated the second “lord” of Psalm 110:1 (“my lord,” kyrios mou) to mean the Deity. The first LORD of Psalm 110:1 (the LORD, Ho Kyrios) they always reserve for the one God, Jehovah.
Both the Pharisees and Jesus knew that this inspired verse was crucial in the understanding of the identity of the promised Messiah. Jesus quoted it to show the Messiah would be both the son (descendent) of King David and David's “lord” (see Matt. 22:41-46; Mark 12:35-37; Luke 20:41-44). This key verse, then, quoted more than any other in the New Testament, authorizes the title "lord" for Jesus. Failure to understand this distinction has led to the erroneous idea that whenever the New Testament calls Jesus "Lord" it means he is the Lord God of the Old Testament.
Just like Jesus taught in John ...
