LORD and Lord

All Scriptures cited are to the NIV uk

The LORD says to my lord: ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.’

– Psalm 110: 1 (NIV-UK) –

Q Who is speaking to whom in this passage?

A This Psalm was written by David, who wrote as inspired. In it he sees Jehovah as addressing Jesus (‘my lord’).

The Hebrew word rendered ‘LORD’ is Yhovah.

The Hebrew word rendered ‘lord’ is adown.

By convention, several English translations use the block-letter ‘LORD’ to differentiate the Almighty in this verse and in other passages throughout the Old Testament. See, for instance, the King James Bible, the New English Bible, the New American Bible, the Revised Standard Version. Both Young’s Literal Translation and Rotherham’s Emphasized Bible explicitly identify by name Yahweh as the one who addresses ‘my lord’. And in 1 Cor. 8 we read (emphasis added):

5. For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as indeed there are many ‘gods’ and many ‘lords’), 6. yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.

The instruction to ‘sit at my right hand’, is from the greater to the lesser. We know from other verses that Jesus is the one for whom all enemies will be put ‘beneath his feet’. See 1 Cor. 15 (emphasis added):

26. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

27. For he [God] ‘has put everything under his feet’. Now when it says that ‘everything’ has been put under him, it is clear that this does not include God himself, who put everything under Christ.

28. When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all.

Thus, it is the LORD Jehovah, the Self-Existent One, the Father alone, who will accomplish this for His Son, the ‘lord’.

Therefore, from Psalm 110: 1 we are taught that Jehovah and Jesus are not only separate and distinct from each other, but that God is immeasurably higher than Jesus.

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