Psalms 110 — Septuagint (LXX)

THE NT'S MOST-CITED OT VERSE. At least eight explicit NT citations deploy this verse Christologically: (1) MATTHEW 22:44 / MARK 12:36 / LUKE 20:42–43 — Jesus' challenge to the Pharisees: 'If David calls him LORD, how is he his son?' establishing Messiah's-superiority-over-David; (2) ACTS 2:34–35 — Peter's Pentecost sermon argues the ascended Jesus is David's Lord seated at God's right hand; (3) 1 CORINTHIANS 15:25 — 'he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet' deploys the footstool imagery for the end-of-history subjection-of-all-enemies; (4) EPHESIANS 1:20–22 — 'God raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, FAR ABOVE all rule and authority'; (5) COLOSSIANS 3:1 — 'seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God'; (6) HEBREWS 1:13 — closing the epistle's catena: 'to which of the angels has he ever said: SIT AT MY RIGHT HAND until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet?'; (7) HEBREWS 10:12–13 — 'when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, HE SAT DOWN AT THE RIGHT HAND OF GOD, waiting from that time UNTIL HIS ENEMIES SHOULD BE MADE A FOOTSTOOL FOR HIS FEET'; (8) REVELATION 3:21 — 'I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I also conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne.'

THE DAVIDIC ARGUMENT. Jesus' Matthean use (Matt 22:42–45) is particularly consequential: 'How then does David, in the Spirit, call him LORD, saying: THE LORD SAID TO MY LORD, SIT AT MY RIGHT HAND? If David thus calls him Lord, how is he his son?' Jesus exploits the two-fold 'Lord' address (YHWH speaks to David's-Lord) to establish that the Messiah is MORE THAN David's-descendant — he is also David's-LORD. The argument does not deny Davidic-descent but adds transcendent-status.

LXX vs MT: 'my LORD' (Hebrew adoni — 'my lord,' a human-respectful title) vs LXX tō kyriō mou ('my Lord' — Greek kyrios, same as YHWH-Septuagint-rendering). The Greek collapses the Hebrew distinction between YHWH (divine name) and adon (respectful-honorific), enabling a stronger divine-reading.

RIGHT-HAND-SESSION THEOLOGY. The right-hand position indicates royal-authority next-to-the-throne. Hebrews reads the right-hand-session as proof that Christ's-priestly-sacrifice is finished: unlike Levitical priests who 'stand' perpetually offering sacrifices, Christ SAT DOWN — sacrifice completed.

MAJOR LXX-VS-MT DIVERGENCE WITH CHRISTOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCE. The LXX renders the Hebrew text remarkably differently, and its reading 'FROM THE WOMB BEFORE THE MORNING STAR I HAVE BEGOTTEN YOU' (ek gastros pro heōsphorou exegennēsa se) became a major proof-text for pre-eternal-generation-of-the-Son Christology in the early Church Fathers (Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Athanasius).

The LXX's reading makes the Davidic-king a begotten-son-from-pre-dawn-womb — a divine-generation formula. Combined with Ps 2:7's 'you are my Son, today I have begotten you,' this verse supplied the Fathers' two-fold argument for the Son's eternal-generation: (a) Ps 2:7 for the eternal-begetting, (b) Ps 110:3 LXX for the pre-creation (before-the-morning-star = before-creation) begetting.

'MORNING STAR' (heōsphorou — 'light-bearer, dawn-bringer' — the Greek rendering of Lucifer in its original astronomical sense, the morning-planet Venus). 2 Peter 1:19's 'until the day dawns and the morning star (phōsphoros) rises in your hearts' and Revelation 22:16's 'I am the bright MORNING STAR' (ho astēr ho lampros ho prōinos) draw on the same morning-star/dawn imagery.

The MT differs entirely, speaking of the people's free-will-offering on the day-of-the-king's-battle, in holy-garments, from-the-womb-of-the-morning, the dew-of-the-king's-youth. The Hebrew poetic-text is obscure; the LXX translator made interpretive choices that read the text Messianically-begetting-language.

HEBREWS' MELCHIZEDEK CHRISTOLOGY FOUNDATION. This verse is cited FIVE TIMES in Hebrews alone: Heb 5:6, 5:10, 6:20, 7:17, 7:21. The entire extended argument of Hebrews 5–7 unfolds from this verse — establishing that (a) Christ is a priest, (b) his priesthood is not the Levitical but the older-Melchizedek-order (Gen 14:18–20), (c) his priesthood is PERMANENT (forever / eis ton aiōna), (d) his priesthood was established by DIVINE OATH (God's unchangeable-self-sworn promise), making it superior to the Levitical-priesthood which had no such oath.

HEBREWS 7 unfolds the Melchizedek-typology in detail: (a) Melchizedek's name means 'king of righteousness'; 'king of Salem' means 'king of peace'; (b) he is 'without father or mother, without genealogy, without beginning of days or end of life' (Heb 7:3) — literary-silence about his birth and death typifying eternal-priesthood; (c) Abraham's paying-tithes to Melchizedek (Gen 14:20) shows Melchizedek's-superiority even to Abraham (and hence to the Levitical-priests who descend from Abraham through Levi); (d) Christ-after-Melchizedek's-order is thus a priesthood superior to the Levitical-order.

DIVINE-OATH vocabulary (Heb 7:20–22): 'this was not without an oath. For those who formerly became priests were made such without an oath, but this one was made a priest with an oath by the one who said to him: THE LORD HAS SWORN AND WILL NOT CHANGE HIS MIND, YOU ARE A PRIEST FOREVER.' The Davidic-psalmic oath becomes the NT-epistle's strongest argument for Christ's covenant-superiority.