(of David, lyric)

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Across the book of Psalms, from Psalm 2 to Psalm 89 to Psalm 110, a narrative arc can be traced from monarchical bravado to despair to… whatever this is— a prophetic oracle that can be read in radically different ways. In Psalm 110, Book Five of the Psalter still wrestles with the central problem of Psalm 89: how a divinely guaranteed dynasty could have been dethroned and the Lord’s home on Zion destroyed. Clearly, given how frequently Psalm 110 is cited in the Greek New Testament, early Christians wrestled with a similar problem, another temple razed, another anointed leader lost. To these—and other— losses, the psalm offers consolation. But what consolation, exactly?

Many readers find comfort in the pair of triumphal imperatives of the oracle with which the psalm begins: “sit at my right” (1) and “rule within your foes | your people” (2b-3a), a construction the Masoretic text intensifies by syntactically shunting “your people” to the next phrase or clause. These imperatives stand outside of time—Walter Benjamin would locate them in “messianic time”—which means other temporal cues are needed to determine whether the divine oracle is to be read as a fact of the past or a prophecy of the future or an eternal present. The monarchy was/is pronounced to last “until I make your enemies | your footrest” (1). But that “until” (`ad) is ambiguous. Has the foot-stooling happened already, which is why there is now no king on a throne? Or is the enemies’ defeat deferred, as ever, which is why some readers hope for the return of a king? Similarly, all the temporal phrases in verse 3—“in the day of your might / in the hallowed splendors | from the womb, from the dawn / yours the dew | your youth”—do they refer to a dawn/dew/day gone by or a might/womb/youth yet to come? If this is consolation, is its point that the monarchy lasted long enough to fulfill its purpose, and therefore the Lord’s vow was not actually broken (4a)? Or is the comfort that “the staff of your power” will someday return?

The psalm’s second half does not decide either way. Instead, there seems to be a second oracle, equally unclear about who and what as it is about when: “You are a priest | forever / after the manner | of the Kings of Justice” (4). Is this the Lord speaking to “my lord” (5)? The same “my lord” as verse 1? Who are these Kings of Justice, if they are plural, or who is this King of Justice, this Melchizedek? The psalm appears to allude to an ancient tradition of the king as a judge even as it appears to equate kingship and priesthood. Is this a prophecy of restoration—the king will come back as a priest, as kings used to do in the days of Melchizedek? Or is it a pronouncement of transfer, implying that priests have taken the place of kings? Does “the day of his rage” (5) replace “the day of your might” (3), or do both refer to past—or future—events? What do we do with the back-and-forth verb forms in verses 5 and 6: “he shattered kings / He governs amid the others | he has filled the bodies / shattered the heads | over many lands”? If the forms indeed represent different temporal cues, are we to contrast some shattering past with governing among the others in the present or future, or are these times continuous?

The psalm is a blur and a mystery, down to its last, memorable, inscrutable image. Someone, presumably the priest-king who has shattered or will have shattered the heads of other nations and kings, bends to drink, then rises. There is such humane stillness in this cinematic moment. The rest of the psalm concerns itself with grandeur and dominance—the right hand (1, 5), the enemies at the feet. Here, even if the image does reflect, as some suggest, an anointing or inaugural ceremony, bathing in the River Jordan or in Wadi Kidron, it seems so simple, even natural. It feels like peace. And yet, if the psalm does look ahead to a future when enemies may become footrests, the moment of drinking straight from the stream is calm that goes before storms.

Perhaps the secret to the psalm’s consoling power lies in its prophetic polyvalence, a wide-openness to interpretation that allows messianic readers to hold onto both calm and storm in their desire for a vision of a restored monarchy, allows priests and high priests to style themselves bearers of a lost divine Davidic promise, and even allows Achaemenid, Ptolemaic, and Seleucid governors to see themselves seated at the right hand of God. This psalm that simultaneously sanctions and undermines dynastic authority, both within and outside of time, can never not be relevant, forever completed and unfulfilled.