Charles Ellicott Commentary Psalms 110

1. The Messiah; and, if so, with a prophetic consciousness of His Divinity, or, at least, His superiority as a Prince over all other princes.
2. David himself: this is, of course, inconsistent with the Davidic authorship of the psalm.
3. Solomon.
4. Hezekiah.
5. Joshua son of Josedech.
6. One of the priest-kings of the Asmonean dynasty.

We now come to the words of the oracle: “Sit thou at My right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool.”

Commentators have sought in the customs of Arabia, and even in the mythology of the Greek poets, for proof that this expression denotes viceroyalty or copartnership in the throne. If this meaning could be established from Hebrew literature, these parallels would be confirmatory as well as illustrative; but the nearest approach to be found in the Old Testament only makes the seat at the king’s right hand a mark of extreme honour (see the case of Bathsheba, 1 Kings 2:19; of the queen consort, Psalms 45:9; and of Jonathan, 1 Maccabees 10:63).

Nothing more can be assumed, therefore, from the words themselves than an invitation to sit at Jehovah’s right hand to watch the progress of the victorious struggle in which wide and sure dominion is to be won for this Prince.

But even this is obscured by the concluding part of the psalm , where Jehovah is said to be at the right hand of the person addressed, and is beyond question represented as going out with him to battle.

Hence, we are led to the conclusion that the exact position (“at the right hand”) is not to be pressed in either case, and that no more is intended than that, with Jehovah’s help, the monarch who is the hero of the poem will acquire and administer a vast and glorious realm.

Footstool.—The imagery of the footstool (literally a stool for your feet) is no doubt taken from the custom mentioned in Joshua 10:24.

Send.—The verb should be rendered here as stretch, as in Genesis 22:10 and Genesis 48:14, and it frequently refers to stretching out the hand, often with hostile intent. The poet here speaks in his own person, addressing the King to whom the oracle has just been announced.

Rod of thy strength—that is, the scepter, which is the emblem of royal power and sway . The word staff is different from that rendered rod in Psalm 2:9; and the image is not, as there, necessarily of a weapon of destruction, but only of kingly rule, as in Psalm 45:6.

Rule thou ...—It is better to take these words as a quotation and understand them as spoken of Jehovah. In the picture before us, the Divine King seats the earthly monarch by His side and, taking his scepter from his hand, stretches it as a token of the wide empire he is to administer from Zion (where they sit enthroned) over the surrounding nations, and bids him assume the offered sway, in spite of the enemies that surround him at present.

The expression in the midst, instead of over, implies the condition under which the sovereignty was to be assumed, as does the rest of the psalm, which proceeds to describe the wars by which ultimate triumph over the hostile tribes would be secured.

This difficult verse runs, literally, Your people willingnesses (or , willing offerings) in the day of your force in holy attire, from the womb of morning dew of your youth.

The first clause is tolerably clear. The word rendered force means either “strength” or “an army;” and the noun willingnesses appears as a verb in Judges 5:9, to express the alacrity with which the northern clans mustered for battle. We may therefore translate: Your people will be willing on your muster-day.

As to the next two words, there is a variation in the text. Many manuscripts read, by the slightest change of a Hebrew letter, “on the holy mountains” (this was also, according to one version, the reading of Symmachus and Jerome). Adopting this reading, we have a picture of the people mustering for battle with alacrity on the mountains around Zion, under the eye of Jehovah Himself, and in obedience to the outstretched sceptre.

The second clause is not so clear. By themselves, the words “from the womb of morning dew of your youth,” would naturally be taken as a description of the vigour and freshness of the person addressed: “yours is the morning dew of youth.” With the image compare:

“The meek-eyed morn appears; mother of the dews.”

THOMSON.

(Compare to Job 38:28.)

But the parallelism directs us still to the gathering of the army, and the image of the dew was familiar to the language as an emblem at once of multitude (2 Samuel 17:11–12), of freshness and vigour (Psalms 133:3; Hosea 14:5), and was especially applied to Israel as a nation in immediate relation to Jehovah, coming and going among the nations at His command (Micah 5:7). Here there is the additional idea of brightness—the array of young warriors, in their bright attire, recalling the multitudinous glancing of the ground on a dewy morning: your young warriors come to you thick and bright as the morning dew.

Milton has the same figure for the innumerable hosts of angel warriors:—

“An host
Innumerable as the stars of night
Or stars of morning, dewdrops, which the sun
Impearls on every leaf and every flower.”

After the order of Melchizedek. — This follows the Septuagint and Vulgate. Better, after the manner of, since the psalmist could have had no intention of contrasting this priesthood with that of Aaron, as there naturally was when the Aaronic order had come to an end or was visibly doomed to extinction.

The previous history of Israel itself offered no example of the formal union of kingly and priestly offices in one person. It first appears in idea in Zechariah 6:12-13; in actual fact in the pontificate of Jonathan . It is true that the royal and priestly functions were sometimes united, especially in the case of David, and in 2 Samuel 8:18, David’s sons are called “priests” (in the English version, “chief rulers; ” margin, or princes). It was therefore necessary to go back to Melchizedek, in whom history recognized this sanctioned and formal union (Genesis 14:18). For the various points brought out in the Epistle to the Hebrews 6:7, see New Testament Commentary.

The Lord at thy right hand. —We are naturally tempted to understand this as still referring to the king whom the first verse placed at Jehovah’s right hand. But the word for Lord here is Adonai, which is nowhere else used except in reference to God. Moreover, God throughout has so far appeared as the active agent. It is He who stretched out the sceptre and conferred the office of priest; and until now the king has been the person addressed.

It is therefore necessary still to consider him as addressed, and to suppose that Jehovah’s change of position from the king’s right hand to his left is simply due to the usage of the language. To sit at the right hand was an emblem of honour; to stand at the right hand was a figure of protecting might (Psalms 16:8; Psalms 109:31); and the imagery of a battle into which the song now plunges caused the change of expression.