TheBibleNet: Psalm 110

Psalms:

Bk 1: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41

Bk 2: 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72

Bk 3: 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89

Bk 4: 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106

Bk 5: 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119a 119b 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132
133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150

Additional Psalms: 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 Samuel Chronicles

Essays: Intro - Music - Form & Language

Dedication, genre? Is the rest of the line a title, or the opening verse?

110:1 LE DAVID MIZMOR NE'UM YHVH LA'DONI SHEV LIYMIYNI AD ASHIT OYEVEYCHA HADOM LE RAGLEYCHA

לְדָוִד מִזְמוֹר נְאֻם יְהוָה לַאדֹנִי שֵׁב לִימִינִי עַד אָשִׁית אֹיְבֶיךָ הֲדֹם לְרַגְלֶיךָ

KJ (King James translation): (A Psalm of David.) The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool.

BN (BibleNet translation): A Mizmor for David. {N} YHVH says to my lord: "Sit at my right hand, until I turn your enemies into your footstool."

LA'DONI: Which is really LA ADONI, but ellided; "unto my lord", confirms yet again that these Psalms are addressed to David and not written by him.

LIYMIYNI: LA'DONI is also significant here because it differentiates quite clearly between its human meaning as "sire", for the king, and its religious usage as a way of avoiding pronouncing YHVH overtly. But at the same time, it makes clear what the role of the king was: "be my right hand" - a phrase that will become significant in the Christian gospels later on (Colossians 3:1 for example). Being the "right hand" is simply a way of stating "the divine right of kings": the deity rules the entire Cosmos, but down here, in the little back-corner known as Earth, there is a local ruler who has been put in charge, and his name too is Adonai, "my lord", "sire".
Though it is also more symbolically significant than that, because he rules in Yeru-Shala'im, which is located in the tribal territory of... Bin-Yamin: "the son of the right hand".

110:2 MATEH UZ'CHA YISHLACH YHVH MI TSI'ON REDEH BE KEREV OYEVEYCHA

מַטֵּה עֻזְּךָ יִשְׁלַח יְהוָה מִצִּיּוֹן רְדֵה בְּקֶרֶב אֹיְבֶיךָ

KJ: The LORD shall send the rod of thy strength out of Zion: rule thou in the midst of thine enemies.

BN: YHVH will send forth the rod of your strength from Tsi'on: "Rule in the midst of your enemies."

MATEH: Go back to Numbers 1, where the 2nd census is done using these MATEH, and a pun on the two meanings: rod and tribe. (It also came up in one of the earlier Psalms, as a play on the Biblial equivalent of company logos and branding and "staff" - see my note at Psalm 105:16]. So does he mean send out "your most powerful tribe", which from Shelomoh's time onwards was Yehudah, not Bin-Yamin, or the rod which is the royal sceptre, in the way that Mosheh carried Nechushtan into battle, and Henry V the flag of St George (click here)?

110:3 AMCHA NEDAVOT BE YOM CHEYLECHA BE HADREY KODESH ME RECHEM MISH'CHAR LECHA TAL YALDUTEYCHA

עַמְּךָ נְדָבֹת בְּיוֹם חֵילֶךָ בְּהַדְרֵי קֹדֶשׁ מֵרֶחֶם מִשְׁחָר לְךָ טַל יַלְדֻתֶיךָ

KJ: Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power, in the beauties of holiness from the womb of the morning: thou hast the dew of thy youth.

BN: Your people offer themselves willingly on the day that you go to war; {N} in adornments of holiness, from the womb of the dawn, yours is the dew of your youth.

AMCHA NEDAVOT: There is no verb here, though KJ has added one, and in the future tense as well. Logically enough, as it follows YISHLACH in the previous verse. But there is another oddity, which KJ has not picked up: NEDAVOT is in the feminine, which it should be for AM - but also in the plural, where AMCHA is singular: why is not AMCHA NEDAVAH?

Poetically very complex, this verse is built upon the roles of various of the gods and goddesses who inhabited the ancient polytheon, before the Omnideity took sole power. HADREY KODESH takes us, probably, to BA'AL CHADAD, the god of storms who is sometimes Ba'al Hadad with a Hey rather than a Chet; the RECHEM can only be the fertility goddess, though whether Chavah (Eve), or Yah, or Sarah (Asherah) is a matter of speculation: the full moon anyway, not Tamar the virgin or Delilah the post-menopausal night, because this is about fertility (RECHEM means "womb"). SHECHAR is the goddess of the dawn, who we have seen in various Psalms as AYELET HA SHACHAR. The dew belongs to the sun-god, as does the rain, for his are the fertilising "waters" without which the female egg will remain barren.

NEDAVOT: How is that connected with NADAV = "generous"? As in MITNADEV, a volunteer? Does that mean he is building a volunteer army, professional soldiers by personal choice, rather than requiring or even forcing conscription? There are strong hints throughout the David legends that he used foreign mercenaries with regularity - see my accounts of this in "City of Peace".

What the poetry also confirms is the status of the priest-king as both mere human being and simultaneously "the son of God", in the Christian idealisation of that term. Which is to say that he is himself the earth-god, epiphanised. The next verse will underscore that confirmation.

110:4 NISHB'A YHVH VE LO YINACHEM ATAH CHOHEN LE OLAM AL DIVRATI MALKI TSEDEK

נִשְׁבַּע יְהוָה וְלֹא יִנָּחֵם אַתָּה כֹהֵן לְעוֹלָם עַל דִּבְרָתִי מַלְכִּי צֶדֶק

KJ: The LORD hath sworn, and will not repent, Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek.

BN: YHVH has sworn it as an oath, and will not revoke it: "You are a priest for ever {N} in the the manner of Malki Tsedek."

This verse too is rich with complexity. Malki Tsedek was the priest of Shalem with whom Av-Ram met formally after his victory in the war of the Five Kings (Genesis 14); Malki Tsedek worshipped the deity under the name El Elyon, and that name would later be absorbed as yet one more name for the Omnideity, as we have seen in several Psalms. But not in David's time. When he captured Shalem (2 Samuel 5 ff), and the other six hilltop villages that would be conurbated into Yeru-Shala'im, Adoni Tsedek was high priest of El Elyon, and rather than have him put to death, David made the much wiser political decision to absorb that cult into the one that he followed, and appointed Adoni Tsedek as joint High Priest, the other being Avi-Atar of Nov, another of the non-Yahwistic shrines on the hills of what would soon be renamed Yeru-Shala'im (see Psalm 52). Adoni-Tsedek was not, however, permitted to keep his full name, but was required to drop the first part, and was known thereafter simply as Tsadok, or in English Zadok the Priest (though this is not the High Priest of that name who is remembered in Handel's oratorio of that name; he came later still; but it is the root of the name whose followers are known in English as Sadducees).

LE OLAM: As appears to be the norm in theological statements of this kind, "forever" lasted only until 70 CE, when the Temple itself fell.

More detail on David's Tsadok in 1 Chronicles 6:4-8, or the easy version here (and the very much fuller version here and then here).

110:5 ADONAI AL YEMIYNCHA MACHATS BE YOM APO MELACHIM

אֲדֹנָי עַל יְמִינְךָ מָחַץ בְּיוֹם אַפּוֹ מְלָכִים

KJ: The Lord at thy right hand shall strike through kings in the day of his wrath.

BN: My Lord at your right hand crushes kings on the day of his wrath.

The translations constantly fail to distinguish YHVH from Adonai, assuming one is a synonym for the other, when, as noted above, one refers to the earthly and the other to the divine. "My Lord" here is David, the king, and he is seated (cf Acts 7:55–56; Romans 8:34; Ephesians 1:20; Colossians 3:1; Hebrews 1:3; Hebrews 8:1; Hebrews 10:12; Hebrews 12:2; 1 Peter 3:22; Revelation 3:21; Matthew 22:44; Acts 2:33, all at the same link, for the Christian take on this), on the right hand (the Bin-Yamin) of YHVH. APO is David's wrath, not YHVH's.

YEMIYNCHA: Once again that allusion to the Mashiyach (not the Moshi'a) as the Bin-Yamin, the one who sits on the "right hand"; I have pointed out the earthly king, but there is also, in the planetary and stellar rather than the human world, the Earth itself, allegorised as Tammuz, Osher, David, etc etc; and eventually Jesus in the Christian re-establishment of the myth. And later still Ar-Thur.

110:6 YADIN BE GOYIM MAL'E GEVIYOT MACHATS ROSH AL ERETS RABAH

יָדִין בַּגּוֹיִם מָלֵא גְוִיּוֹת מָחַץ רֹאשׁ עַל אֶרֶץ רַבָּה

KJ: He shall judge among the heathen, he shall fill the places with the dead bodies; he shall wound the heads over many countries.

BN: He will pass judgement on the nations, filling the whole of their land with dead bodies, crushed heads.

But also with living compassion and steadfast mercy, as per his covenant! We have noted this paradox many times.

110:7 MI NACHAL BA DERECH YISHTEH AL KEN YARIM ROSH

מִנַּחַל בַּדֶּרֶךְ יִשְׁתֶּה עַל כֵּן יָרִים רֹאשׁ

KJ: He shall drink of the brook in the way: therefore shall he lift up the head.

BN: He will drink from the brook along the way; by this means he will lift up his head. {P}

Is this final verse a prayer, a poem, or an oracle? Its choice of language, and its context in history, suggest to me that we should investigate seriously the latter. Water allusions are usually to the wilderness journeys of Mosheh, but I wonder if, on this occasion, that might not be a Shibolet, or even a Sibolet (see Judges 12).

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Psalms:

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