Psalm 110:1 - Session

THE BOTTOM LINE

Before I get into an explanation, let me begin with saying that, whoever YHVH was talking to in this verse, it sure wasn't Jesus. Many people who cite it only say the first half of the verse, which is only part of the conditional statement. Look at the second half:

"A Psalm of David. YHVH declared to my master, sit to My right until I make your enemies as a stool for your feet."

Instead of the protagonist being crushed by his enemies, as was the case for Jesus, the enemies for this person would themselves be crushed. The enemies, in this verse as we read further, were the enemies of the Jewish people. And as Acts 1:6 says, even the people who supported Jesus were asking "Why did he leave without crushing our enemies and establishing a Jewish kingdom?"

OK, so Jesus didn't fulfill that prophecy.

But let me expand a little further as to why this is not about a dead messiah sitting in heaven.

IMAGINE NO HEAVEN

If you look throughout all of the writings of the Tanach that were written before their exile to Babylon and their interactions with the Zoroastrians, there is no mention of Hell, Purgatory, or Heaven as supernatural locations for eternal punishment, burning away of evil, or as a place for the good to reside. These were all later inventions that would then lie at the periphery of Jewish thought, even until today. It seems to be a view that developed after the Hellenistic period,

Rather than “Heaven”, there’s “Gan Eden”, a supernatural Garden of Eden for those who are righteous to wait for the final resurrection of the dead. Rather than “Purgatory”, there’s a “Gehinnom” where everyone goes for some period of time to purge away one’s sins with fire. And there is no Hell. Although, I expect that if your sins were horrific, that Gehinnom could be a rather long enough time where it would be indistinguishable from Hell.

In any case, those supernatural states and places were never in the Tanach. And, therefore, when one reads a narrative in the Tanach that predates those beliefs, then projecting those later views upon those earlier views is reading into the text (eisegesis) rather than pulling out from the text (exegesis).

RIGHT HAND

The expression of being to God's right side or hand is an expression of loyalty and authority. It does not mean that someone was sitting on a mountaintop next to God (YHVH preferred dwelling on mountain tops and high places). We even use that expression today, as in "he's my right hand man", an expression of being indispensable. In other Psalms, the protagonist is to God's right, and at other times, God is at the right of the protagonist. 

They aren't playing musical chairs here on some mountaintop, it is an expression concerning a human being's relationship to God and visa versa.

MY LORD

The term used to speak of the human being in verse 1 is "adoni" (pronounced "adonee"). This is not a reference to a supernatural being. A nearly identical word, traditionally, is "adonai" which is a reference to God. While Abraham was referred to as "adoni", he was never referred to as "adonai" since the former was a title of honor, and the latter the title of a deity.

Unfortunately, the Septuagint didn't make this any easier since it took those names and the one for the tetragrammaton YHVH and used the same word for all of them, making it a bit cumbersome to read. 

So this is why I translated it as "my master". "My sovereign" is equally good.

 BY OR FOR?

The prefix letter used for "David" typically means "for", "to", but in Biblical poetry can also mean "By" and "belonging to".

So the question is then, "Did David write the song, or was it written in the style of David, or was it written for David?"

To do that, one needs to look at the to text as a whole. Does is speak of the life of David? If not, then perhaps it was written for David. Was it written in the first person and seems to speak of David's life? The "by David" is suitable. If one holds that this is about a future king messiah, then "of" as in "the style of David" is suitable. 

But to hold that it cannot be about David because it was written by David is simply presuppositional.

FINALLY

Jesus didn't fulfill Psalm 110:1 because his enemies were not killed, and, instead, his enemies killed him. 

Since there is no "Heaven" in the Tanach, the view of the protagonist sitting in heaven next to YHVH is anachronistic and misses the expression of "my right".

There's a lot wrong with forcing Jesus into Psalm 110:1. Some of it is by not reading the rest of the Psalm.

Style: Presuppositional anachronisms applied to force Jesus into the role that describes someone else.

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