by HOIM Staff

Let us begin with facts that everyone agrees on. Indeed it would be amazing not to see this point clearly. There is complete agreement that Psalm 110:1 is "the most important Old Testament proof passage for the development of Christology [who is the Messiah], and it acquired a quite decisive role... Psalm 110:1 should also be taken into account as the biblical basis for the earliest Christian and Pauline doctrine of the heavenly lord and for its origin and development" (Martin Hengel, Son of God, p. 80).

Psalm 110:1 is quoted or alluded to in the New Testament far, far more than any other verse from the Old Testament. Psalm 110:1 was a key teaching tool of the Apostles and of all New Testament Scripture. So should it be for us today. It should be taken as the solution to all the present squabbles and quarrels about the identity of YEHOVAH God and of the Messiah. Psalm 110:1 reads, "The LORD [YHVH, Kurios] speaks in an oracle to my [David's] lord: 'Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.'"

Why is this verse so dramatically important for our understanding? Because it names the two major players in the divine drama, YEHOVAH's plan, and it tells us that the Messiah Yeshua, the first-born Son of God, is finally to have all his enemies subjected to him. Until that time comes, the Messiah is to sit at the right hand (the key position) of the Father who is YHVH. The Son of God is YEHOVAH's "right-hand man" (Psalm 80:17). The Son of God is also the "associate" of the one God (Zechariah 13:7). This same person is the Son of Man, the Human Being, whom Stephen saw at the right hand of YEHOVAH God (Acts 7:56). He is "the righteous one" predicted by the Old Testament (Acts 7:52).

The first vital fact to be stated and then relayed to all whom we teach is that the second lord of Psalm 110:1 is not a second YHVH, which would make two YHVHs, and shatter the whole structure of biblical theology. The second lord is in the Hebrew adoni ("adonee"), which occurs 195 times in the Hebrew Bible and is never once the title of Deity!

Everyone reading the Hebrew knew that adoni ("my lord," not "my Lord") announced the staggering fact that a human person was to be exalted to be the right-hand MAN, next to the One God, YHVH. Psalm 80:17, as we saw, described the Messiah as exactly this "man of God's right hand." The staggering biblical fact is that YEHOVAH God has promoted to the second position in the universe a sinless human being!

The teaching of Psalm 110:1 informs the entire theological structure of the New Testament and leads Paul to instruct us in the most fundamental of all truths: "There is one God and one mediator between God and man, who is the man Messiah Jesus" (1 Timothy 2:5). This restates exactly the creed announced in Psalm 110:1. How very far all this is from the brain-breakingly complex creeds devised by post-biblical church fathers, based on an alien Greek philosophy, and foisted on the whole church, on pain of excommunication and sometimes death!

The catastrophic mistranslation found in most versions of Scripture is the placing of a capital letter on the second lord! Once that second lord is read as Lord (as opposed to lord) the reader is misled into thinking that there is a second person who is Lord GOD at the right hand of the one God. Lord, with capital, is the standard translation of the Hebrew Adonai, Lord God. The false capital deceives the reader immediately into believing in the existence of two who are equally GOD. The first and great commandment is thus violated.

When the second lord is properly translated as lord, not Lord, the reader knows that this second lord is a human being, adoni, "my lord." Adoni is the regular title for a superior who is not God. We need to go through all of the occurrences of adoni, my lord, to instill once and for all the easy fact that the Messiah is a human being, the Son of Man, and NOT another who is GOD!