Wednesday, August 16, 2023

Nicholas Perrin on Psalm 110 (LXX: 109)

  

Perhaps the first readers of this psalm were as puzzled as Jesus’ first-century hearers when it came to identifying the one whom David addresses as ‘my lord’. We suspect that most reasoned, along with a number of modern-day biblical scholars, that there as no better candidate than Solomon, who ascended to the throne during David’s lifetime. In this case, the psalm would have been interpreted as a reflection on Solomon’s enthronement and, by extension, on the covenant issued in 2 Samuel. 7. It is likely that when the psalmist asserts David and Solomon’s induction into the order of Melchizedek, this is with some reflection on their cultic initiatives. The LXX’s decision to render the Hebrew (‘al-debarātî melkî-ṣedeq, ‘for the sake of Melchizedek’ or ‘on account of Melchizedek’) of Psalm 110.4 (= Ps. 109.4 LXX) as ‘according to the order of Melchizedek (kata tēn taxin Melchisedek)’ is evidence that as we draw closer to the first-century world of Jesus, interpretive tradition was concerned to reinforce the purple thread stretched between the ryal priest Melchizedek and David/Solomon. Whatever connection David was thought to have had with Melchizedek in the original writing of the psalm (when the text must have been composed as part of an attempt to buttress the religio-political position of the Davidic line by connecting it with the legacy of the Jerusalem-based priest-king par excellence), its reception in the Hellenistic period betrays intensifying expectation for a coming priestly son of David.

 

At the same time, the key role which Psalm 110 ascribes to Jerusalem could not have been easily missed. Because (for the psalmist) the Davidic king could not take his throne until Yahweh had first properly taken his throne at the temple in Jerusalem (Ps. 110.1-2 (Ps. 109.1-2 LXX)), even the most convincingly secured throne would be inconsequential from centralized worship in Zion. According to the vision of Psalm 110, the political (re)unification of the tribes, the same tribes’ cultic anchoring in Zion and the permanent installation of the Davidic rule in Zion as priest-king were together the non-negotiable elements of the complete eschatological package. Of course the priestly of God’s people from Zion (the very conditions which uniquely obtained under David and Solomon) was a necessary condition for the full realization of not only Psalm 110, but also Psalm 89 and 2 Samuel 7. All this is to say that, at least according to these texts, the term of the Davidic covenant could not have finally been realized apart from the Melchizedekian fusion of the royal and priestly roles within the appointed centralized cultus. The issue of space was equally if not more important than the issue of genealogy. From the Second-Temple perspective, once Israel’s worship had been frustrated by the sundering of the kingdom, once too the logical movement from centralization (2 Samuel 6) to worship (2 Samul 7) had been reversed from worship (1 Kings 8) to decentralization (1 Kings 12), subsequent kings were again obliged to delegate the priestly vocation which would have under more ideal circumstances fallen to them.

 

If Psalm 110 is any indication (and I think it is), then as far as Second-Temple readers of Scripture were concerned, David and Solomon were seen as uniquely bearing the mantle first carried by the Zion-based priest-king Melchizedek. This of course would have had significant eschatological implications. Because the regathering of 12 tribes would have implied the renewal of the Melchizedekian (Davidic/Solomonic) jurisdiction, as envisaged by Psalm 119, Israel’s restoration would have probably also implied a displacement of priesthoods, whereby the familiar present temple hierarchy with its line of succession would be forced to give way to a new priesthood, after the order of Melchizedek.

 

This helps explain why the supports of the (second-century BCE) much-disputed Hasmonean dynasty relied so heavily on this text in its flattering descriptions of the high priest Simon and his successors, a dynasty which likewise combined the priestly and royal offices á la Melchizedek. Their dependence on Psalm 110 comes to the fore not least through their propensity to identify members of the dynasty as ‘priests of the Most High’. The divine epithet ‘Most High’ is rare in the Jewish scriptures, occurring most frequently in the narrative relating to Melchizedek (Gen. 14.18-20), where it occurs three times. From there it is picked up in Daniel (in reference to the Son of Man), and then by Jubilees and Sirach (often in reference to the Hasmoneans). In Genesis, Jubilees and Sirach the phrase ‘Most High’ is consistently used in reference to an officiating priest; as for Daniel, this may nor may not be granted, though I will maintain exactly as much below. At any rate by identifying themselves as ‘priests of the Most High’, the Hasmonean rulers sought to reinforce the claim that they had achieved Israel’s focal hope—a reunited kingdom centered on a Jerusalem-based temple operating under the auspices of a Melchizedekian king-priest. By asserting themselves in this way, the Hasmoneans may have met with stiff resistance (not least from the early Qumran community), but we have no evidence that the theological assumptions undergirding this assertion, the merging of the royal and priestly offices, were themselves challenged.

 

Yet between the royal and the priestly concerns, the priestly remains paramount. This seems to hold true at least as early as the fourth-century (BCE) Chroniclers, where, as Ken Pomykala observes, ‘neither the text nor the context of Chronicles supports a messianic or royalist interpretation. Instead, in the hands of the Chronicler the Davidic dynasty tradition subserved a particular vision of the Jerusalem cultic community in the late Persian period’. The same eclipsing of royal by priestly concerns continues down into the Hasmonean period. This is patently evidenced, for example in Ben Sira’s panegyric dedicated to Simon in his capacity as high priest (Sirach 50). As Eyal Regev summarizes, it is not so much the case that Hasmoneans usurped religious authoring as a way of shoring up political power; rather they ‘regarded themselves primarily as religious leaders . . . not political or military figures who had invaded the cultic realm, but priests and religious leaders that had been pushed by the hand of God to rule the Jewish people and protect the Temple’. In the Hasmonean period, the priestly and royal roles merged freely in the person of Israel’s chief executive. But these rulers were priests first and royal figures second: this was the logic of the Judaism of Jesus’ day. (Nicholas Perrin, Jesus the Priest [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2018], 161-63)