Wednesday, August 14, 2024

Brant Pitre on Jesus's use of Psalm 110 (LXX: 109)

  

By quoting Psalm 110, Jesus is implying that he himself is not just a descendant of King David; he is David’s “lord.” Moreover, when the rest of the psalm is taken into account, Jesus also appears to be implying that he will be seated at “the right hand” of God in heaven (Ps 110:1) and even perhaps he was “begotten” by the Lord God form “the womb of the dawn” (Ps 110:3)—that is, a superhuman being (cf. the “son of Dawn” in Isa 14:12). In other words, Jesus uses Psalm 110 to imply that the messiah is not simply the deity of David, but the super-Davidic, divine Son of God. And Jesus does all this not by shouting it from the rooftops or going around declaring, “I am the divine messiah.” Instead, as a Jewish teacher of parables, he uses riddles, questions, and allusions to Scripture to lead his audience to ask for themselves: “Who is the messiah really? What does David himself say?” In the end, Jesus himself “provides no solution to this question,” precisely because he wants his audience to draw their own conclusions.

 

In sum, a strong case can be made that Jesus uses the riddle of the messiah in Psalm 110 to reveal the mystery of his divine kingship. As the messiah of Jewish Scripture, Jesus is both a descendant of King David and the Lord of King David. He is both the long-awaited king of Israel and the super-Davidic Son of God. In other words, he is both human and divine. And he reveals all this without ever explicitly proclaiming, “I am the messiah,”” or “I am David’s Lord,” much less, “I existed from before the womb of the dawn.” Instead, Jesus uses the riddle about the messiah in Psalm 110 to both reveal and conceal his divine messiahship—until the time is right for him to be more explicit. Indeed . . . there is good reason to believe that Jesus also uses Psalm 110 (along with Daniel 7) to reveal his identity in the presence of the Jerusalem Sanhedrin and that he is accused of blasphemy and handed over to the Romans for execution as a result (cf. Matt 26:63-64; Mark 14:61-62; Luke 2:67-68). (Brant Pitre, Jesus and Divine Christology [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2024], 155-56, italics in original)

 

  


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