Many mistakenly believe that the second lord of Psa 110:1 is Adonai; in reality, it is Adoni (for a discussion, see Psalm 110:1 and the two Lords in the 1832 First Vision Account) For that reason I was pleased to find a recent author (correctly) vocalise the second lord as adoni:
The Son in the Psalms
A great launching point is how
Jesus reads himself into Psalm 110 in Mark 12:35-37. In this influential psalm,
David writes,
YHWH said to my Adon,
“Sit at my right hand.” (Ps. 110:1, my trans.)
Examining the psalm closely, we
find that there are three persons in the mix: YHWH (usually displayed in
English translations as “LORD,” in small caps), who is speaking; Adoni (usually translated “my Lord”), to
whom YHWH is speaking; and David, who is recording this speech and referring to
Adon as “my.” In other words, David
is writing down something that YHWH says to his (i.e., David’s) Adon. Even in the ancient context of the
psalm itself, this is rather striking. But its beautify is multiplied when
Jesus reveals its true sense.
In a key moment when he turns the
tables on the religious opponents who have perpetually picked fights with him
about scriptural matters, Jesus asks,
How can the scribes say that the
Messiah/christos is the son of David?
David himself, in the Holy Spirit, declared,
“The Lord said to my Lord,
‘Sit at my right hand.’” . . .
David himself calls him “Lord.” So
how is he his son? (Mark 12:35-37, my trans.)
This is a bit complex, so let us
break it down.
Jesus brings up the common Jewish
belief that the Messiah/christos is
the “son of David” (as expressed in, say, 2 Sam. 7:12-13 and elaborated in
intertestamental writings such as Pss. Sol. 17.4-46; 4Q174; 4Q252). He then
goes back to Psalm 110 and points out that David refers to this Messiah figure,
who is enthroned at God’s right hand, as “my Lord”—that is, Adoni, discussed above. He concludes
with an open-ended question: If David refers to this person as “my Lord,” how
can he also be his “son”? Upon inspection, it becomes clear that Jesus is
saying that the very same person is simultaneously (1) the “son of David,” (2)
the Messiah/christos, and (3) the “my
Lord” (Adoni) that David is
describing in Psalm 110:1. And while Jesus leaves his audience hanging at this
point, those with ears to hear quickly realize that Jesus is identifying himself as that very person, fitting all
three descriptions.
In other words, here is how Jesus
reads Psalm 110: David, who was “in the Holy Spirit,” has recorded a
conversation between YHWH and someone David calls “my Lord” (Adoni), whom Jesus now reveals to be the
“son of David” and “Messiah/christos”—namely,
himself. And all this is roughly a millennium before Jesus comes. The whole
scene being described in Psalm 110 is now unveiled to be fantastically
Trinitarian: the Spirit reveals that the Father (YHWH) addresses the Son
(David’s Lord/Adon) in his heavenly
pre-existence and seats him at his right hand to rule over all things. When this happens and how to work out all the detail are
beyond the present scope. What matters is that Jesus directly attests that he,
as the preincarnate Son of the Father, is the one who being addressed by YHWH
in Psalm 110, long before his human birth. (Greg Lanier, Is Jesus Truly God? How the Bible Teaches the Divinity of Christ [Wheaton,
Ill.: Crossway, 2020], 30-32; it should be noted that Psa 110:1 is more
consistent with LDS theology, as there is a numerical distinction between
God/YHWH and Jesus; Lanier is making a common error among Trinitarians—a Triad does
not make a [Creedal] Trinity)