Post #4308030

41 Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question, 42 saying, “What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?” They said to him, “The son of David.” 43 He said to them, “How is it then that David, in the Spirit, calls him Lord, saying, 44 “‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet”’? 45 If then David calls him Lord, how is he his son?” 46 And no one was able to answer him a word, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions. -Matthew 22:41-46 If anyone ever tells you that Jesus never claimed to be God, they are either lying or extremely ignorant. Here Jesus quotes from Psalm 110:1. This particular song of David is rich with dense prophetic meaning, speaking of the Messiah as superior to the king of Israel in every way. Most noticeably, David makes it explicit that the Messiah is Divine. Looking a bit deeper at the two languages used to express this, the Psalm itself shows us that though there is one God, there are multiple Persons to the one God. In the Hebrew, a more direct translation would be "YHWH said to my Adonai," While "Adonai" is in rare occasions used for human rulers, we know that David used it for a Divine figure because he was *king* of Israel - there were no humans above him. The only Adonai above him is YHWH, God Himself! So there is one God, but both these titles for God distinguish the persons: YHWH is God, speaking to Adonai who is God. The Greek text of Psalm 110 is more direct, using the same word Kyrios: εἶπεν ὁ κύριος τῷ κυρίῳ μου, "Said the Lord to my Lord." In the Greek Old Testament, the proper name of God (יהוה, the four lettered Tetragrammaton) is often rendered as κύριος. The educated Pharisees who had access to the Hebrew rendering of Scripture would understand the advanced distinction; one deity, with two Persons of that deity interacting in the text. For everyone else hearing Jesus speak, used to the more common Greek rendering, they understood Him to point to the Psalm as saying "My God said to God." Jesus, explaining the text, clears away any belief the commoner might have had that God was just doing internal deliberation, as though He were thinking to Himself. He shows them that this is discussion between two Persons. The Pharisees are silent that day, in part because they could not account for what the Psalm says about the Messiah. But the Psalm also prophesies the institution of a new priesthood, one which God prefers over the Levitical institution. From the fourth verse, The Lord has sworn     and will not change his mind, “You are a priest forever     after the order of Melchizedek.” In other words, David writes that the Messiah is Divine. When He arrives He will be the head of a priesthood that precedes and is superior to the Aaronic order. As the Pharisees take stock of the Psalm in their minds, they don't just recognize Jesus claiming to be God; they also understand that He is prophesying the greatest religious upheaval in history, a replacement of the old with the new.