Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary Matthew 22:44

"The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, Till I put thine enemies underneath thy feet?" — Matthew 22:44 (ASV)

But this view, though not wrong, is too simple because, as Jesus points out, David called the Messiah his Lord. How then could Messiah be David’s son? The force of Jesus’ argument depends on his use of Ps 110, the most frequently quoted OT chapter in the NT. The Davidic authorship of the psalm is essential to his argument. The phrase “speaking by the Spirit” not only assumes that all Scripture is Spirit-inspired (cf. Acts 4:25; Hebrews 3:7; Hebrews 9:8; 10:15, 2 Peter 1:21) but here reinforces the truth of what David said.

How does Jesus use this psalm in his argument? We have already seen how Matthew portrays much prophecy and fulfillment as OT paradigms pointing forward to the Messiah, sometimes with the understanding of the OT writers, sometimes not (5:17; 8:16–17). David is regularly portrayed, even in the OT, as the model for the coming Anointed One; and David himself understood at least something of the messianic promise (2 Samuel 7:13–14).

The widely held, if not dominant, view of the Jewish community was that the coming Messiah would be the son of David. Jesus not only declares that view inadequate, but insists that the OT itself (e.g., Psalms 110) tells us it is inadequate. But if Messiah is not David’s son, whose son is he? The solution is given by the prologue to Matthew (chs. 1–2) and by the voice of God himself (3:17; 17:5): Jesus is the Son of God. Even the title “Son of Man” (see comment on Mk 8:31) offers a transcendent conception of messiahship. This does not mean, however, that Jesus (or Matthew) is denying that the Messiah is David’s son. This gospel repeatedly recognizes that Jesus the Messiah is Son of David—by title (1:1; 9:27; et al.), by genealogy (1:2–16), and by portrayal of Jesus as King of the Jews (2:2; 27:11, 29; et al.). What Jesus does is to synthesize the concept of a human Messiah in David’s line with the concept of a divine Messiah who transcends human limitations, even as Matthew elsewhere synthesizes kingship and the Suffering Servant. The OT itself looked forward to one who would be both the offshoot and the root of David (Isaiah 11:1, 10; cf. Revelation 22:16).