Psalms 110
Psalms 110 — Commentary and Meaning
The short answer
Psalm 110 opens with a puzzle that has fascinated readers for two thousand years. David, the psalm's traditional author, reports a conversation between God and someone he calls "my lord": "Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool." But who could David — Israel's greatest king — address as his lord? The psalm seems to look past David himself toward a greater king still to come, one invited to share the very throne of God.
Then verse 4 adds something even stranger. God swears an oath that this king will be "a priest forever," in the order of Melchizedek — the mysterious priest-king of Salem who appears briefly in Genesis 14. In ancient Israel, throne and altar were normally kept apart: kings ruled, priests offered sacrifice, and the two roles were deliberately separated. But Melchizedek held both, and this psalm claims the Davidic king in Jerusalem inherits that older, combined office. One figure legitimately wears both crowns.
This is why Psalm 110 became the New Testament's most-quoted psalm. The early Christians, following Jesus' own use of it, saw here the shape of what "messiah" really means: not merely a national ruler, but Israel's true king who is therefore the world's rightful Lord — raised, exalted, and seated at God's right hand. And because he is priest as well as king, he doesn't just reign over his people; he represents them before God. The rest of the psalm fills out the picture: the king's scepter extends from Zion, his people volunteer freely in the day of his power, and God stands at his right hand to judge among the nations. The psalm keeps asking one question: how big does this figure have to be to hold an office like that?
What scholars say
These two excerpts answer the psalm's twin riddles from opposite ends: N.T. Wright explains why the early Christians kept returning to verse 1 to declare the risen Jesus both Israel's king and the world's true Lord, while John Goldingay shows how verse 4's link to Melchizedek gave Jerusalem's Davidic kings a basis for holding both political and priestly roles that Israel otherwise kept separate.
“It seems to refer to Psalm 110, quoted in verses 34 and 35: ‘The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand, until I place your enemies underneath your feet.’ Here, as in several ‘ messianic ’ Psalms, we find that Israel’s true king is the world’s true Lord; that’s how the logic of messiahship, if we can put it like that, works out. Israel is God’s chosen people for the sake of the world; so Israel’s true and final king, when he arrives, will be the world’s rightful sovereign. The early Christians, following Jesus himself (see Luke 20.41–44), went back to Psalm 110 again and again to make this point. They saw it tying together Jesus’ Davidic ancestry with God’s fresh action in raising and exalting him, and thus declaring him to be the true Messiah.”
“He made the decisions, and he led the worship in the sense that he took the lead in offering the sacrifices. Later things were very different in Israel. While Israel did not believe in separating church and state, it did separate leadership in worship and leadership in politics. It believed in separation of powers so that too much power would not be in the hands of one person. Admittedly, there were occasions when the king exercised leadership in worship. Psalm 110 notes that the Jerusalem king in effect succeeded Melchizedek and that he was also the (or a) priest in the city, and it implies that this succession gave the Davidic leadership in Jerusalem a basis for reckoning it was okay to exercise both roles.”
What it means for you
Psalm 110 invites you to ask where real authority sits. If the true king already reigns at God's right hand, then the powers that dominate the headlines — political, economic, cultural — are not the last word, and you can hold them more loosely. And because this king is also a priest, his rule isn't distant or merely forceful; he represents his people even as he reigns. That combination matters on hard days: the one with all authority is also the one who intercedes for you. Verse 3 pictures people offering themselves willingly in the day of his power — a quiet prompt to make your loyalty a glad volunteering rather than a grudging compliance.
Psalms 110 in context
Psalm 110 sits among the psalms of Book Five of the Psalter, near the "Hallel" psalms of praise (Psalms 111–118) that follow it. It is a royal psalm — a poem about the king in Jerusalem — like Psalms 2 and 72, but it is unique in joining kingship to priesthood through the figure of Melchizedek from Genesis 14. Its seven verses divide around two divine speeches: the invitation to sit at God's right hand (verse 1) and the oath of an everlasting priesthood (verse 4), with scenes of victory and judgment surrounding each.