Psalms 110

The psalm opens with a sentence that has puzzled and thrilled readers for three thousand years: The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool. Notice first who is speaking and to whom. David, the anointed king of Israel - the highest human authority in the land - reports a word that God speaks not to David, but to someone David himself calls my Lord. There is, in other words, a Lord above the king, One to whom even David must look up. And to this Lord God says: Sit thou at my right hand. In the ancient world the seat at a monarch's right hand was the place of highest honour and shared authority - the position of the one who ruled with the king and acted in his name. This is not a command to wait idly; it is an enthronement. The figure is seated in the place of supreme power, and there He remains until I make thine enemies thy footstool - the image of a victor whose conquered foes are brought so low that they become the very stool beneath His feet. The whole sweep of the verse is one of unrivalled exaltation: a Lord enthroned at God's own right hand, awaiting the final subjection of every opposing power.

The LORD shall send the rod of thy strength out of Zion: rule thou in the midst of thine enemies (v. 2). The rod is the ruler's sceptre - the emblem of royal authority and power. It goes out of Zion, the city of God, the seat of His kingdom on earth, from which the enthroned Lord's rule will extend outward. And then a striking phrase: He rules in the midst of thine enemies. Not from a fortress safely removed from danger, not after the battlefield has been cleared, but in the very thick of opposition. The reign described here is not a reign that waits for the world to fall quiet first; it is a reign exercised now, in contested territory, surrounded by hostility that has not yet been subdued. This is the same picture verse 1 began - a Lord enthroned at the right hand until the enemies are made a footstool. The kingship is real and present even while the enemies are real and present. The until of verse 1 and the in the midst of verse 2 belong together: the King reigns already, though the last enemy has not yet fallen.

Verse 3 turns from the King to His people, and the language grows luminous: Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power, in the beauties of holiness from the womb of the morning: thou hast the dew of thy youth. The first thing said of the King's people is that they are willing - not conscripted, not dragged into His service, but glad and ready in the day of his power. A King enthroned at God's right hand gathers not slaves but volunteers. They come in the beauties of holiness, an expression used elsewhere of worshippers arrayed in sacred splendour before God - the people of this King are a worshipping people, clothed in holiness as in fine garments. And then two images of freshness and abundance: from the womb of the morning and the dew of thy youth. Both pictures point to something new-born, unspent, and countless - dew that appears at dawn over the whole ground, fresh as the first light of day. However the precise grammar is weighed, the impression is unmistakable: the King's willing people are as numerous and as fresh as the dewdrops of the morning, a multitude rising to Him at the dawn of His day of power.

Verse 4 introduces the second great announcement of the psalm, and it begins with the strongest words of assurance Scripture knows: The LORD hath sworn, and will not repent. God does not merely declare this; He swears it - and adds that He will not repent, will not change His mind, will not draw it back. What follows, then, is fixed and irreversible: Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek. Three things in that line are worth weighing. First, the figure already enthroned as King in verse 1 is now also named a priest - and in Israel those two offices were kept rigorously apart. Kings came from the tribe of Judah; priests from the tribe of Levi, the house of Aaron. No king of Israel was ever a priest, and when one tried to seize the priest's role he was struck with leprosy (2 Chron. 26:16-21). Yet here is One who is both. Second, this priesthood is for ever - not a lifetime office passed from father to son at death, but an unending one. Third, it is after the order of Melchizedek, not of Aaron - an older, stranger priesthood reaching back behind the law of Moses to the days of Abraham. The oath of verse 4 sets this Priest-King in a category entirely His own.

The scene now widens into judgment: The Lord at thy right hand shall strike through kings in the day of his wrath (v. 5). There is a deliberate turn here worth noticing. In verse 1 the King was invited to sit at God's right hand; now it is the Lord who is at thy right hand - the one enthroned and the LORD who enthroned Him acting together, side by side, in the same work. The imagery is of a King going out to war alongside his God: kings who set themselves against Him are struck down in the day of his wrath. The language is stern, and meant to be. The reign promised in verse 1 - until I make thine enemies thy footstool - is not a sentiment but a certainty, and verses 5 and 6 show the certainty carried out. Proud kings who rule over many countries, who have set themselves against the LORD and His Anointed, will not stand in that day. The same psalm that opens with the tenderness of a willing people in the beauties of holiness does not flinch from the other side of the King's coming: a real and final reckoning with every power that has refused His rule.

He shall judge among the heathen, he shall fill the places with the dead bodies; he shall wound the heads over many countries (v. 6). The reach of this judgment is universal - among the heathen, that is, among all the nations, not Israel alone. The enthroned King is judge of the whole earth, and the vivid, sobering battlefield imagery - the places… with the dead bodies… the heads over many countries - insists that His authority is total and His victory complete. No corner of the world lies outside His jurisdiction; no power, however high or wide its dominion, is exempt from His judgment. It is the same vision that runs from verse 1 to the end: a King whose enemies are all, at last, brought low. But the language deliberately echoes something older. He shall wound the heads recalls the first promise of all, spoken in Eden over the serpent: the seed of the woman shall bruise thy head (Gen. 3:15). The judgment of Psalm 110 is the working out, on the scale of the nations, of that ancient word - the decisive wounding of every head lifted up against God.