Just consider how much of Hebrews’s extensive teaching on Jesus’s heavenly priesthood is derived from Psalm 110:4’s linking Jesus to Melchizedek—the only Old Testament passage to do so. Indeed, it appears that Psalm 110:4 is the “solid food” the writer refers to in Hebrews 5:13–14, which he starts to expound (Heb. 5:9–10), pauses to rebuke them (Heb. 5:11–14), and then returns to in Hebrews 6:20. In short, how much this psalm means to you may well be a marker of your maturity. Let us not allow such a feast go to waste. Rather, let us taste and see that the Lord is good.

Out of all the verses in the Hebrew Bible, the most frequently quoted in the New Testament is Psalm 110:1. But that’s not all. Verse 4 of the same psalm gets almost an entire chapter’s worth of commentary (Heb. 7:11–28). Clearly, the apostles and prophets saw this messianic psalm as highly significant for their understanding of Jesus.

We would do well, then, to consider how this psalm presents the Messiah whom we worship.

Messiah as David’s Lord and King (Ps. 110:1–3)

Like many other psalms, Psalm 110 is labeled “A Psalm of David.” But perhaps nowhere is David’s authorship more significant than here. It’s significant because David was Israel’s human king and “lord”—subject to Yahweh, of course. And yet here in verse 1, David refers to someone else as his “Lord”—someone distinct from Yahweh:

The LORD [Hebrew, Yahweh] says to my Lord [Hebrew, Adonai]:
“Sit at my right hand,
until I make your enemies your footstool.”

David, speaking in the Holy Spirit (Matt. 22:43), is overhearing a conversation. A conversation between two persons. The LORD we know. But who is this other Lord whom Yahweh invites to sit at his right hand? One whom even David refers to as “my Adonai”?

This is a passage Jesus used to stump the scribes and Pharisees (Matt. 22:41–46). They knew the Messiah would be David’s son. But then Jesus hit them with Psalm 110:1, asking, “If then David calls him Lord, how is he his son?” (Matt. 22:45). We now know the answer. Christ is both “the root and the descendent of David” (Rev. 22:16), “descended from David according to the flesh, and . . . declared to be the Son of God in power . . . by his resurrection from the dead” (Rom. 1:3–4).

But it didn’t end at the resurrection. The New Testament teaches that this invitation to “sit at Yahweh’s right hand” was fulfilled when Jesus ascended into heaven and sat down (1 Pet. 3:22; Heb. 1:3; 10:12; 12:2). As Peter argued on the day of Pentecost,

David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says,
“The Lord said to my Lord,
‘Sit at my right hand,
until I make your enemies your footstool.”’ (Acts 2:34–35)

From which he concludes, “Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36).

That’s who Jesus is, according to Psalm 110. The ascended Lord and King seated on David’s throne (Luke 1:32; Acts 2:30), ruling “in the midst of his enemies” (Ps. 110:2) “until they are made his footstool” (cf. 1 Cor. 15:25).

Messiah as the Eternal High Priest (Ps. 110:4)

But Psalm 110 doesn’t just picture the Messiah as David’s Lord and King. It also presents him as our eternal high priest. We see this in verse 4, where David says:

The LORD has sworn
and will not change his mind,
“You are a priest forever
after the order of Melchizedek.”

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