The following is taken from the monumental work titled The Incarnate Christ and His Critics: A Biblical Defense, authored by Robert M. Bowman Jr. & J. Ed Komoszewski, published by Kregel Academic, Grand Rapids, MI, 2024, Part 5: The Lamb upon His Throne: Jesus’ Divine Seat, Chapter 36: Sitting at God’s Right Hand, pp. 677-681.
In my estimation this is THE best and most comprehensive exposition and defense of the biblical basis for the Deity of Christ. Every serious Trinitarian Christian student of the Holy Bible, apologist, and/or theologian must have this book in the library.
LORD, MY LORD, AND THE LORD
Before we discuss Jesus’ use of Psalm 110:1 in his answer to Caiaphas’s question, we need to discuss the different forms of the word “lord” as found in most English Bibles. The ESV translates verse 1, “The Lord says to my Lord,” as do several other modern versions (CSB, ESV, NASB, NKJV, NLT). Other English versions read almost identically: “The Lord says to my lord” (NABRE, NIV, NRSV, TNK). As we discussed earlier in this book (see especially pp. 469–70), where English Bibles have the title “Lord” (with small capital letters), this translates the Hebrew divine name YHWH, commonly represented in English as Jehovah or Yahweh. Thus, a more literal translation of the Hebrew text of Psalm 110:1 would be “Yahweh says to my lord” (cf. ASV, LEB). The Septuagint reads, “The Lord [ho kyrios] said to my Lord [tō kyriō mou]” (Ps. 109:1 LXX), and this is how it is always quoted in the New Testament. It is also likely that Jesus used a form of the Aramaic word for “Lord” (mārēʾ) in place of YHWH when he quoted the verse aloud, as this was the conventional Jewish practice at the time. As Darrell Bock points out, “The minute such a substitution was made, the ambiguity would exist in Aramaic.”6 So don’t blame English versions for the two occurrences of “Lord.”
Unitarian apologist Anthony Buzzard leverages the use of ʾădōnî in the MT of Psalm 110:1 as one of his main arguments against the deity of Christ. He complains about translations that say “my Lord,” insisting that the word must be translated with a lower-case l, “my lord.” According to Buzzard, ʾădōnî should always be translated “lord” while ʾădōnāy should always be translated “Lord.” He goes so far as to assert, “The clarity and precision of the Hebrew text was marred by the ‘curse of the capital.’”7 Buzzard also especially reproaches “Trinitarian” authors who have erroneously stated that Psalm 110:1 uses the word ʾădōnāy and who infer from this mistaken premise that Psalm 110:1 explicitly identifies the future Messiah as God.8 Buzzard actually tries to argue in reverse, claiming that ʾădōnî is the form of the word for “lord” that “expressly tells us that the one so designated is not God, but a human superior.”9 In short, according to Buzzard, the fact that Psalm 110:1 calls the future Messiah (Jesus) ʾădōnî proves that Jesus is not God!
We have already thoroughly responded to Buzzard’s view of the title “Lord” in the New Testament, which focused on Acts 2:36 as his main proof text (see pp. 477–81). Here we will address his interpretation of Psalm 110:1, which will require a deep dive into the forms of the Hebrew noun. Buzzard’s argument presupposes that the distinction between ʾădōnî and ʾădōnāy predated the time of Jesus; indeed, his argument requires that the distinction was in place when Psalm 110 was written. This is definitely not the case with regard to the written text. We are not dealing with two different nouns. In ancient manuscripts, the noun as represented by these two standard forms ʾădōnî and ʾădōnāy would appear exactly the same, with only what we would call the consonants, ʾDNY (אדני).10 Remember that Hebrew is read from right to left, so aleph [א [is the first letter [transliterated in English letters like this:ʾ]. By the way, the yodh [י[, not to be confused with the English transliteration of aleph, can express a consonantal sound or a vowel sound. That’s why you will see yodh transliterated sometimes with i and sometimes with y.) The full spellings on which Buzzard’s argument depends derive from the little marks, called vowel points, placed under or after the consonants in the medieval Hebrew manuscripts. Thus, ʾDNY becomes ʾaDoNY (ʾădōnî) and ʾaDoNāY (ʾădōnāy, or adonai).11 This distinction between the two forms is not represented in any visible way in ancient Hebrew texts. Looking at Psalm 110:1 in an ancient manuscript, you would see simply ʾDNY.
Buzzard knows this. He admits that the vowel points “were added much later than New Testament times.” However, he argues that the medieval Masoretic scribes who produced the Hebrew manuscripts (the MT) added the vowel points to preserve “how the text was read in the synagogues.” In other words, he claims that while the ancient manuscripts did not distinguish visually between ʾădōnî and ʾădōnāy, the Jews used these two different forms when reading or reciting aloud from the Hebrew text. Furthermore, Buzzard asserts that the result is absolutely reliable: “The Masoretes who faithfully pointed the Hebrew text with meticulous care distinguished between a nonDeity lord and the Deity who was the Lord God. . . . The Jews were almost fanatically careful in what they regarded as the sacred task of copying the scriptural text.”12
As one might expect, we do not have any way of knowing precisely when Jews began using the two different forms of ʾDNY when speaking the words of Scripture aloud. However, the dominant view in biblical scholarship is that the distinction probably arose long after Psalm 110 was written, and quite possibly after the period of the New Testament. In any case, the idea that the forms of this word were fixed in every occurrence from biblical times down to the Masoretic era is untenable. Even some of the reference works that Buzzard quotes in support of his view make this quite clear. For example, Buzzard quotes selectively from the entry on “Lord” in the Dictionary of Deities and Demons, but he omits (without an ellipsis) the following statements from the same pages he cites:
It is difficult to trace precisely this development from the use of ʾădōnāy as a title to its use as a name, because it cannot be excluded that the Hebrew text of the OT was edited according to new theological and liturgical insights. In the transmission of the text the final form of this name may have been used to replace older forms. . . . We have to reckon with the possibility mentioned above of editors changing the original text, e.g. its vocals, according to later principles.13
Buzzard even goes so far as to alter one of the entry’s sentences in a way that clearly changes its meaning. He quotes it as saying, “The reason why [God is addressed] as adonai [with long vowel], instead of the normal adon, adoni or adonai [with short vowel] may have been to distinguish Yahweh from other gods and from human lords.”14 The bracketed words “God is addressed” lead the reader to understand the dictionary to be explaining why people in Old Testament times addressed God with this particular form of the noun. However, what the entry says is this: “The reason why this is written ʾădōnāy instead of the normal ʾādôn, ʾădōnî, or ʾădōnāy may have been to distinguish Yahweh from other gods and from human lords.”15 In context, the author was explaining why this particular written form of the word was adopted, some centuries after the Old Testament books were originally written.
In another reference work from which Buzzard quotes selectively, he omits the following statement in the same entry: “Original reading probably in all cases ʾadōnay.”16 That is, according to this reference work (a lexicon, which uses shortened sentence structure), the Hebrew text originally used ʾadōnay where it later, due to the editorial work of the Masoretes, distinguishes between ʾădōnî and ʾădōnāy.
There is something peculiar that follows from the claim that Psalm 110:1 was originally understood as expressing the word ʾădōnî to mean a “non-Deity lord” in contrast to ʾădōnāy. In the MT, the word ʾădōnî occurs 278 times, including Psalm 110:1. Yet it occurs nowhere else in the Psalms (the longest book of the Bible) or in any of the other wisdom books of the Old Testament (Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes). On the other hand, in the MT, the Psalms uses the word ʾădōnāy 54 times. These statistics don’t prove what the word originally meant in Psalm 110:1, but they do raise some doubt about the claim that Psalm 110:1 originally expressed the specific form of the noun found in the MT and did so in order to deny that the future Messiah would be deity.
According to Buzzard, “There should be no need to have to argue that the Hebrew Masoretic text is correct in Psalm 110:1. There is not a shred of evidence of corruption of the text here.”17 However, just a dozen pages earlier, Buzzard had expressed his approval of the Septuagint wording of Psalm 110:3b, which he quotes as follows: “From the womb, before the morning star, did I beget you” (see Ps. 109:3b LXX).18 If this wording of verse 3 is correct, though, it means the Masoretes failed to preserve the correct wording, because in the MT Psalm 110:3b says something like, “From the womb of the morning, the dew of your youth will be yours”! Besides the reference to the dew (which is in the Hebrew text but not in the Greek text), the main difference here is that the Hebrew consonantal word YLDTYK can be given vowel points to say “your youth” (yaldūteykā, as in the Hebrew MT) or “I have begotten you” (yelidtîykā, as translated in Psalm 109:3 LXX, exegennēsa se, cf. Ps. 2:7).19
There are significant textual variants even among the medieval Hebrew manuscripts in Psalm 110:3. For example, the MT in the first part of verse 3 refers to “holy garments” (hadrê qōdeš, see ESV, NLT; cf. LEB, NASB, NIV), while other medieval Hebrew manuscripts as well as some ancient witnesses to the text have “holy mountains” (harrê qōdeš, see NRSV, cf. NET).20 In this instance, the variant is not merely a difference in vowel pointing, but in the consonantal text itself. The bottom line is that serious biblical scholars, while they greatly respect the MT, do not take it as absolute, let alone profess to do so where convenient while elsewhere preferring alternate texts, as Buzzard does with Psalm 110:1 and Psalm 110:3.
Buzzard’s whole line of argument here proceeds from the false premise that if the Bible describes the Messiah in human, non-divine terms, this means he cannot be divine. In orthodox Christian theology, Jesus the Messiah is both human and divine. The divine Son came into the world as a mortal human, lived, died, and rose from the dead. Biblical affirmations of the humanity of the Messiah are a feature, not a bug, from an orthodox perspective. Likewise, the fact that Psalm 110:1 refers to the Father as Yahweh and the Son as “my lord” is no more problematic theologically than the New Testament practice of using “God” for the Father and such titles as “Christ” for Jesus (see pp. 677–81).
As for Buzzard’s assertion that Psalm 110:1 should be translated with “my lord” rather than “my Lord,” many translators and commentators already take this position. They would agree with him that since ʾădōnî is regularly translated “my lord” elsewhere in the Old Testament, we should do so also in Psalm 110:1, assuming we are translating the MT. This is a respectable position, though it does not justify Buzzard’s inflamed rhetoric. There is another side to this issue, however. This is not just anyone who is being addressed as “my lord.” Whoever this figure is, he is being invited to sit at God’s right hand and to rule as a king and priest forever (110:1, 4). As Jesus argued, that makes this figure greater than David; it makes him greater than any other human. Read in this way, the form of address found in Psalm 110:1 goes far beyond the ordinary courtesies of ancient cultural conventions in which someone politely addresses a king or other authority figure as “my lord.”
From a New Testament perspective, ultimately Psalm 110:1 pointed ahead beyond any Old Testament king to the one whom the New Testament calls “the Lord Jesus” or “the Lord Jesus Christ.” If we translate Psalm 110:1 as part of the whole canon of Scripture, it is not wrong to capitalize “Lord” in this context. We turn, then, to consider whether this New Testament perspective is a valid way of reading Psalm 110.
6. Bock, “Use of Daniel 7 in Jesus’ Trial,” 81.
7. Buzzard, Jesus Was Not a Trinitarian, 162.
8. Buzzard, Jesus Was Not a Trinitarian, 157–61. Buzzard’s most notable example of a scholarly work making this mistake is Louis A. Barbieri Jr., “Matthew,” in The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures, ed. John F. Walvoord and Roy B. Zuck (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1985), 2:73.
9. Buzzard, Jesus Was Not a Trinitarian, 158.
10. In one instance, ădônāy is spelled with the consonant vav, also called waw (ו), in the middle, functioning like the vowel o (Judg. 13:8).
11. The root noun ʾădōn (אדנ (or ʾādôn (אדונ (occurs 44 times in the OT, 20 times meaning a human lord or master (Ps. 105:21; Jer. 22:18; 34:5) and 24 times the Lord God (e.g., Josh. 3:11, 13; Pss. 97:5; 114:7; Zech. 4:14; 6:5). With the definite article, hāʾādōn or hāʾădōn, the title always means “the Lord,” that is, God (8 times).
12. Buzzard, Jesus Was Not a Trinitarian, 168, 172.
13. Klaas Spronk, “Lord,” in Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, ed. Karel van der Toorn, Bob Becking, and Pieter W. van der Horst, 2nd ed. (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 531, 532.
14. Buzzard, Jesus Was Not a Trinitarian, 174–75, bracketed words Buzzard’s.
15. Spronk, “Lord,” 532, emphasis added. 16. BDB, s.v. ʾādôn, 10; cf. Buzzard, Jesus Was Not a Trinitarian, 174.
17. Buzzard, Jesus Was Not a Trinitarian, 173.
18. Buzzard, Jesus Was Not a Trinitarian, 161. Buzzard claims quite implausibly that Psalm 109:3 LXX means that God “begat” the Messiah when Jesus was born of a virgin. The text says that the Messiah was begotten before the “morning star” or perhaps the “morning,” which is more consistent with his preexistence (see above, chaps. 10–12).
19. Willem A. VanGemeren, “Psalms,” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary (Revised Edition), vol. 5: Psalms, ed. Tremper Longman III and David E. Garland (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008), 815.
20. See NET Bible, 2nd ed. (2019), Ps. 110:3 n.
This next excerpt is from pp. 687-689.
SITTING AT GOD’S RIGHT HAND IN HEAVEN
There are, of course, many other passages in the Old Testament (especially though by no means exclusively in the Psalms) that point forward in various ways to the Messiah. However, Psalm 110 is unique in speaking of the Davidic king (with the Messiah as the full realization of this picture) as sitting at Yahweh’s right hand. A few texts speak of Solomon sitting on the throne of Yahweh (1 Chron. 28:5; 29:23; 2 Chron. 9:8), while others speak of Yahweh sitting enthroned in Zion (Ps. 9:7, 11) or of Jerusalem or the temple as his throne (Jer. 3:17; Ezek. 43:4–7). The Old Testament also occasionally speaks of Yahweh being “enthroned on the cherubim,” that is, sitting on or between the images of the cherubim on top of the ark of the covenant in the tabernacle (Exod. 25:22; 1 Sam. 4:4; 2 Sam. 6:2; Pss. 80:1; 99:1). Yet nowhere except in Psalm 110:1 does the Old Testament picture Yahweh and the human king sitting enthroned side by side.
More commonly, the Old Testament pictures God’s “throne” as being in heaven (e.g., 1 Kings 22:19; 2 Chron. 18:18; Pss. 11:4; 33:13–14; 97:1–2, 9; 103:19; 113:4–6; 123:1; Isa. 66:1). Psalm 2, a text that in other respects has several clear verbal and thematic parallels to Psalm 110, actually contrasts Yahweh sitting enthroned in heaven (Ps. 2:4) with the Davidic king sitting on his throne in Zion (2:6).
Evidently, Jesus drew on Psalm 110:1 in his response to Caiaphas because it said something that went beyond what more conventional messianic passages said. While in a purely metaphorical, typological sense, Psalm 110:1 might be read as saying that Solomon or other Davidic kings sat at God’s “right hand” on the throne in Jerusalem, Jesus took the statement in its fullest possible sense—that he was actually going to be ruling alongside God in heaven. Indeed, had Jesus claimed that he was going to rule as Messiah from Jerusalem, the Sanhedrin would not have considered such a claim blasphemous (though presumably they would have vociferously disagreed). Many if not most Jews hoped for a messianic king who would do just that.
On the other hand, Caiaphas probably would not have deemed it blasphemous for Jesus to claim he was going to enter God’s presence in heaven. The Old Testament reported that other human beings had done so without even dying (notably Enoch and Elijah). “The possibility of a heavenly abode offended no Jew who believed in an afterlife for the righteous.”42 However, to sit at God’s right side, meaning alongside God in heaven, was another matter altogether. In the religious and cultural milieu of Jesus, to claim to be a king who would sit at God’s right hand in heaven was tantamount to claiming equality with God.
As we explained earlier in this chapter, Jewish literature during the general time period of the New Testament also does not speak of any human or angelic creature sitting alongside God in heaven. There are texts that picture some figure, such as Moses or (possibly) Enoch, sitting on God’s throne, and we will discuss these references in the next chapter. However, even these texts do not speak of such figures sitting at God’s right hand in heaven. As best we can tell, this element of Jesus’ statement was unprecedented.
We may illustrate the point with the story of the King of Siam and Anna, the nineteenth-century English schoolteacher hired to teach his children, most memorably told in Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein’s musical The King and I. Anna flouts Siamese court protocol by barging into the king’s throne room unannounced, standing in the king’s presence when he is sitting, or by sitting with her head as high or higher than the king. Protocol required that all subjects of the king were to keep their heads lower than his at all times. This sort of royal protocol was well understood (and usually scrupulously observed) in most cultures until the rise of democracy in modern times—the very cultural shift celebrated in The King and I. For Jesus to claim that he would sit at God’s right hand was akin to claiming, in what used to be called an “Oriental” cultural context, that he would be entitled to have his head as high as that of the king.
Jesus, then, was claiming the right to go directly into God’s “throne room” and sit at his side. The temerity of such a claim for any mere human would be astonishing to the Jews of Jesus’ day.43 The priests of the Sanhedrin, to whom Jesus made this claim, could not, as a rule, even go into the inner sanctum of the temple, known as the holy of holies. Many of them had probably never been inside it. The holy of holies could only be entered on a specific day in specific ways by one specific person. Failure to follow instructions resulted in death. On the Day of Atonement, the high priest entered the holy of holies with a bull to sacrifice for personal purification and a ram to burn for atonement. This was followed by a change of garments and ritual washings (Lev. 16:3–5). In other words, God’s presence in the temple was entered cautiously.
If entrance requirements to the earthly holy of holies were so strict, we can imagine what the Sanhedrin priests would have thought about Jesus claiming he would enter God’s heavenly sanctuary. Worse still, Jesus claimed he would enter the heavenly holies of holies and sit down. As Darrell Bock puts it, Jesus’ claim “would be worse, in the leadership’s view, than claiming the right to be able to walk into the holy of holies in the earthly temple and live there.”44 His statement amounted to claiming that he owned the place!
42. Darrell L. Bock, “Jesus as Blasphemer,” in Who Do My Opponents Say that I Am? An Investigation of the Accusations against the Historical Jesus, ed. Scot McKnight and Joseph B. Modica, LNTS 327 (New York: T&T Clark, 2008), 78.
43. What follows in the rest of this paragraph and in the next is essentially repeated from Komoszeswki, Sawyer, and Wallace, Reinventing Jesus, 178.
44. Darrell L. Bock, Jesus according to Scripture: Restoring the Portrait from the Gospels (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2002), 375.
45. Richard Bauckham, “The Power and the Glory: The Rendering of Psalm 110:1 in Mark 14:62,” in From Creation to New Creation: Biblical Theology and Exegesis: Essays in Honor of G. K. Beale, ed. Daniel M. Gurtner and Benjamin L. Gladd (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2013), 83.
FURTHER READING
PSALM 110 IN EARLY CHRISTIAN SOURCES
Psalm 110:1 – Another Clear Testimony to Christ’s Deity Pt. 1
The Binitarian Nature of the Shema [Part 1]
DAVID’S MULTI-PERSONAL LORD PT. 2
APPEARANCE OF THE TRINITY TO ABRAHAM AND DAVID PT. 3
Revisiting the implications that Psalm 110 has on the divine identity of the Messiah Pt. 1
Solomon Was Not David’s Lord! Psalm 110:1 Revisited… Again!
Answering Islam Blog 