"The Lord says to my Lord: 'Sit at my right hand'" until His enemies are made His footstool (Psalm 110:1). "The Lord has sworn... 'You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek'" (Psalm 110:4).

Both verses are cited in the New Testament as prophecies of Jesus as Messiah (cf. Matthew 22:44; Hebrews 7:17). The first shows the Messiah's divine standing, for David himself calls Him "Lord." Since David calls the Messiah Lord, the Messiah was certainly more than David's son. The second shows the Messiah's priestly authority, even though He was not a Levite. The Messiah's priesthood was greater than the Levitical priesthood because it came through a divine oath and was established forever. The writer of Hebrews makes this very argument in Hebrews 5–7.

Why is this important? We have the testimony of both the Old and New Testaments that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. He had to be the Son of God in order to forgive sins, conquer death, and give life to all who believe in Him. A mere "son of David" could not do any of these things.

We also have the testimony of both Testaments that Jesus as Messiah became a high priest. The priesthood was God's chosen means of bringing forgiveness to His people for centuries. Jesus does not abolish this role but becomes its perfect and ultimate expression. His eternal and unchangeable priesthood after the order of Melchizedek gives full validity to His atoning work on behalf of God's people.

Jesus is our Lord and High Priest. Both in who He is and in what He does, He is able to accomplish our eternal salvation. And so: "Praise the Lord!" (Psalm 111:1). "Praise the Lord!" (Psalm 112:1). "Praise the Lord!" (Psalm 113:1). The Hebrew word hallelujah simply means "Praise the Lord!"

AI-Expanded Reflection

Psalm 110 is the Old Testament passage most frequently quoted or alluded to in the New Testament. Jesus used 110:1 to pose a question the religious leaders could not answer: "If then David calls him Lord, how is he his son?" (Matthew 22:41–46). Peter quoted it at Pentecost to explain Jesus' ascension (Acts 2:34–35), and Hebrews builds much of its argument on both verses the comment highlights (1:13; 5:6; 7:17, 21). The picture of the Messiah seated at God's right hand became one of the earliest Christian confessions, preserved in the Apostles' Creed: "He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of God."

Melchizedek appears only briefly in Genesis 14:18–20, as the king of Salem and "priest of God Most High" who blessed Abraham and received a tenth from him. Hebrews 7 draws out the significance: he appears without recorded genealogy, beginning, or end, "resembling the Son of God" (7:3), and because Abraham, the ancestor of Levi, honored him, his priesthood is greater than Levi's. Christ's priesthood rests not by bodily descent but "by the power of an indestructible life" (7:16) — which is why He "is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him" (7:25).

"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom"; all those who practice it have a good understanding, and His praise endures forever (a paraphrase of Psalm 111:10).

This is echoed by Job: "Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom," and to turn from evil is understanding (Job 28:28). And again by Solomon:

• The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction (cf. Proverbs 1:7).
• The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight (cf. Proverbs 9:10).
• The fear of the Lord prolongs life, but the years of the wicked are cut short (cf. Proverbs 10:27).
• The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life, turning one away from the snares of death (cf. Proverbs 14:27).
• Better is a little with the fear of the Lord than great treasure with trouble (cf. Proverbs 15:16).
• By steadfast love and faithfulness iniquity is atoned for, and by the fear of the Lord one turns away from evil (cf. Proverbs 16:6).
• The fear of the Lord leads to life, and whoever has it rests satisfied (cf. Proverbs 19:23).
• The reward for humility and the fear of the Lord is riches, honor, and life (cf. Proverbs 22:4).
• Do not let your heart envy sinners, but continue in the fear of the Lord all the day (cf. Proverbs 23:17).

It is interesting that when we read of the first spread of the Gospel through Judea, Galilee, and Samaria, it was marked by believers living in the fear of the Lord: the church had peace and was built up, and walking "in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit," it multiplied (Acts 9:31).

Both David and Solomon declare that the beginning and heart of wisdom is to fear the Lord. So listen to what Solomon recommends: the beginning of wisdom is this — get wisdom, and whatever you get, get insight (a paraphrase of Proverbs 4:7).

Get wisdom! Get understanding! In other words, it does not come to you automatically. You must go out and get it. Even if it costs you everything, Solomon says it is worth it. Earlier he writes that if you call out for insight and raise your voice for understanding, if you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God (a paraphrase of Proverbs 2:3–5).

Solomon says the wise will search for wisdom as the most precious treasure, and it is within their grasp.

Friends, Paul teaches us to "work out your own salvation with fear and trembling" (Philippians 2:12). This is a command; action is required of us. There is no better place to begin working out your salvation, getting wisdom and understanding, and understanding the fear of the Lord than this: read the Bible, the Word of God! Meditate on it. Memorize it. Study and apply it. If you do, you will be on your way to a life of wisdom and the fear of the Lord, for Scripture is profitable to equip the servant of God for every good work (cf. 2 Timothy 3:16–17).

We have this treasure trove of wisdom within our grasp. Let us stop spinning our wheels spending all our time with the wisdom of this world and things that perish. Instead, I urge you, friends, to invest your time, resources, and energy sacrificially in something of eternal and infinite worth: the Word of the Lord. This Word will equip us for "every good work."

AI-Expanded Reflection

Psalm 111 is an acrostic, like Psalm 37, and it pairs closely with Psalm 112, which is also an acrostic. Psalm 111 describes the works and character of God; Psalm 112 describes the person who fears Him — and uses some of the same phrases for both. "His righteousness endures forever" is said of God in 111:3 and of the God-fearing person in 112:3, 9. The fear of the Lord, in other words, makes a person resemble the One they fear.

The "fear of the Lord" in these texts is not terror but reverent awe that shapes all of life — Proverbs 14:26–27 calls it both "strong confidence" and "a fountain of life." It is the recognition of who God is that makes every other kind of knowledge fall into its proper place. The comment's list of Proverbs shows how practical it is in the wisdom literature: it affects health, contentment, honesty, humility, and envy. Isaiah 11:2–3 says the coming Messiah will be filled with the Spirit of the fear of the Lord and will delight in it — the fear of the Lord is not only the beginning of wisdom for us, but a mark of Christ Himself.

Who is David's Lord in Psalm 110? The LORD tells David's lord to sit at His right hand until his enemies become a footstool for his feet (a paraphrase of Psalm 110:1). This is essentially the same question Jesus later put to the Pharisees: whose son is the Messiah? When they answered "David's son," Jesus asked how David, speaking by the Spirit, could then call him "Lord" — quoting this very psalm — since a son wouldn't normally outrank his own father (a paraphrase of Matthew 22:41–46). No one could answer Him. Jesus was using Psalm 110 to show that the Messiah isn't merely David's human descendant, but far more — both David's son and David's Lord, both human and divine. On the day of Pentecost, Peter boldly quoted this same psalm to the crowd, explaining that David, who died and was buried, had spoken as a prophet, foreseeing the Messiah's resurrection — that he wouldn't be abandoned to death, and his body wouldn't decay. God had raised this Jesus to life, exalted Him to His right hand, and poured out the promised Holy Spirit — because David himself never ascended to heaven, yet spoke these very words about someone who would (a paraphrase of Acts 2:29–36). Peter's conclusion: God has made this Jesus, whom the crowd had crucified, both Lord and Messiah. Hearing this, the people asked what they should do. Peter told them to repent and be baptized in Jesus's name for the forgiveness of sins, and they'd receive the gift of the Holy Spirit — a promise for them, their children, and everyone far off whom God would call (a paraphrase of Acts 2:38–39). As we read this psalm today, what should our response be? It should give us hope — the word "until" shows that God the Father has had a plan in place from the very beginning, and the end hasn't come yet. It should also lead us to repentance: David's Lord, our Lord, sits at the Father's right hand right now, but waits for the appointed time of judgment, when He'll judge the nations and crush the rulers of the whole earth (a paraphrase of Psalm 110:5–7).

AI-Expanded Reflection

The word "until" this comment highlights carries real theological weight, since it means Psalm 110 describes an interim period rather than a final state — Christ is already exalted and reigning, yet the complete subjugation of His enemies is still future. That "already, but not yet" tension is one of the most consistent structural features of New Testament theology as a whole, not unique to this psalm: believers are already forgiven yet still awaiting final resurrection; God's kingdom has already broken in yet isn't fully consummated. Psalm 110, quoted more often in the New Testament than almost any other Old Testament passage, may be one of the earliest scriptural templates for that entire pattern — victory that is real and secured, yet whose full outworking is still being waited for.

Psalm 109 is one of several psalms — alongside Psalm 55, 69, and 137 — labeled "imprecatory psalms," where the psalmist calls down harm on his enemies. The apparent problem for Christians is that this seems to conflict with Jesus's command to love our enemies (Matthew 5:44). So how should we understand these imprecations? While I have my own thoughts, I think Bob Deffinbaugh has written the clearest, most biblically grounded treatment I've read on this.

Deffinbaugh's central argument: imprecatory prayers aren't unique to Psalm 109 — similar prayers for the punishment of the wicked appear throughout Scripture, from Moses and the prophets to Revelation's martyrs crying out for justice, which means the problem can't simply be dismissed as an isolated Old Testament oddity. In Psalm 109 specifically, David's imprecation is only legitimate because he first establishes his own innocence and integrity before God (verses 1–5) — he's been repaid evil for good, accused falsely by "character assassins," and he prays as someone right with God, not as someone taking personal revenge. The punishments he requests mirror covenant curses already spelled out in the Law of Moses for exactly this kind of sin — false accusation, oppression of the needy, showing no mercy — meaning David is asking God to act consistently with what He'd already promised, not requesting something arbitrary or excessive. Crucially, David hands the matter entirely over to God rather than acting on it himself; the psalm ends not in triumph over his enemies but in an appeal to God's mercy and a commitment to praise Him regardless of the outcome. Deffinbaugh's conclusion: imprecatory prayer is reserved for the genuinely wronged and righteous, appeals to God's own justice rather than personal vengeance, and ultimately submits the outcome to God — consistent with, not contrary to, Jesus's later teaching, since loving one's enemies doesn't mean pretending injustice doesn't matter to God.

AI-Expanded Reflection

The distinction Deffinbaugh draws — between imprecatory prayer and personal revenge — is worth connecting directly to Paul's own instruction in Romans, written centuries after Psalm 109: never take revenge, but leave room for God's wrath, since it's God's role to avenge, not ours (a paraphrase of Romans 12:19). That's essentially the New Testament restating the same principle David already modeled: naming injustice honestly to God, asking Him to act, and then actually stepping back rather than taking matters into one's own hands. Read that way, the imprecatory psalms aren't really in tension with Jesus's command to love enemies — they're an example of what it looks like to hand real anger over injustice to God instead of either suppressing it or acting on it personally, which may be a harder and more honest discipline than either extreme.

Is it correct to assume that, since Psalm 110's title says "a psalm of David" while Psalm 111 has no such title, this means the two weren't both written by David?

Yujin responds... That's right. The superscriptions before the psalms are quite slippery, and, as I've recently discovered, genuinely controversial as to how they should even be translated. Sometimes certain psalms are connected by shared language (e.g., Psalms 42–43 share similar expressions, like "why are you downcast, O my soul"), but even that isn't foolproof evidence of common authorship. You can make an argument either way, but we can't be dogmatic about it, since Scripture isn't fully clear on the matter.

AI-Expanded Reflection

The superscriptions' uncertain status actually shows up in how differently major translations have handled them over time — some older translations, like the Septuagint, occasionally attach superscriptions to psalms the Hebrew text leaves untitled, or attribute authorship differently than the Masoretic Text does, suggesting these titles may have been added, or adjusted, at some point after the psalms themselves were originally composed. That doesn't affect the psalms' inspired status or content at all — it simply means the "who wrote this and when" question sits in a genuinely different category of certainty than the actual words of the psalm itself, which is exactly the kind of careful distinction Yujin is modeling by declining to be dogmatic here.

Psalm 112 begins with praise for God's blessings toward those who fear and obey Him — wealth, riches, even descendants blessed with great strength. I've heard two approaches to passages like this. One takes it as a straightforward promise of material prosperity for obedience. The other reads a kind of "spiritual" prosperity into the same promise instead. I believe both approaches are mistaken, and both have caused real harm within the community of faith. We violate a basic rule of biblical interpretation whenever we extract a portion of Scripture without carefully considering its context — including the specific generation the text was originally written to.

This psalm, like most of the Old Testament and even parts of the New, was written under the Old Covenant, built on the Law of Moses. That covenant promised Israel physical and material blessings for obedience (cf. Deuteronomy 28:1–14) and physical and material curses for disobedience (cf. Deuteronomy 28:15–68) — notice there's roughly four times more space devoted to the curses than to the blessings. What surprises me about prosperity preachers is that they never give equal time, let alone the proportionally greater time Scripture itself gives, to the warnings.

What prosperity theology misses is that with Christ's death, the Old Covenant of Law has been replaced by the New Covenant of grace. By participating in Christ's death through faith, Christians now live under a new rule of life, variously called the "new way of the Spirit," the "law of Christ," or the "law that gives freedom." Paul describes this directly, saying that by dying to what once bound us, we've been released from the law to serve in the new way of the Spirit rather than the old written code (a paraphrase of Romans 7:6). Christ inaugurated a covenant better than the old, making the old one obsolete (a paraphrase of Hebrews 8:13), and Christians now serve as ministers of that new covenant — not of the letter, but of the Spirit, since the letter kills but the Spirit gives life (a paraphrase of 2 Corinthians 3:6) — a ministry described as more glorious than what accompanied even the Ten Commandments (cf. 2 Corinthians 3:6–11). We're therefore no longer to judge, or be judged, by the Mosaic Law, having been set free from that obligation (Galatians 5:1; cf. Colossians 3:16–17) — as Scripture puts it, those led by the Spirit are not under the law (a paraphrase of Galatians 5:18). Even when disagreement briefly surfaced among Jewish believers in Acts, as they slowly grasped their freedom in Christ, the apostles settled the matter decisively at the Jerusalem Council, with Peter asking why they'd test God by placing a yoke on Gentile believers that neither they nor their ancestors had ever been able to bear, insisting instead that salvation comes through the grace of the Lord Jesus alone (a paraphrase of Acts 15:10–11). They concluded Gentiles shouldn't be forced under the Law of Moses at all, only asked to follow a few basic guidelines to preserve peace with Jewish believers still working out their new freedom (cf. Acts 15:19–21; Romans 14). Yet twenty centuries later, people, and not even exclusively Jewish ones, still try to put Christians back under that same yoke.

So if we're no longer under the Law of Moses, how should we apply a passage like Psalm 112:1–3? Some spiritualize the text, preaching not material prosperity but "spiritual" prosperity instead. But is that rightly handling the word of truth (2 Timothy 2:15)? Isn't that simply a gentler version of eisegesis — reading into the text something foreign to it? It may be a slight improvement over prosperity theology, but not by much.

Instead, why not simply preach the text in its actual context? Given Israel's relatively miserable history, with only a few periods of genuine prosperity, this reflects Israel's stubborn, ongoing rebellion throughout much of its history. The promise of prosperity for obedience was genuine, but the people wouldn't, and ultimately couldn't, keep their end of the covenant. By the time of Christ, Israel wasn't at any height of glory — it was dominated by Rome, and its own religious leadership reeked of hypocrisy and corruption. When Jesus came, He explained the Law properly, showing just how far the people and their leaders had drifted from actually following it (cf. Matthew 5–7; 23). Then, through His death, He introduced an entirely new way. It seems to me we should preach that new way, as recorded predominantly in the New Testament epistles, rather than the weaker, temporary way presented throughout much of the Old Testament. Some principles do carry over (probably nine of the Ten Commandments, for instance), but that doesn't mean the Old Covenant itself has been reestablished — only that it shares points in common with the New.

So when Psalm 112:1 says how blessed is the one who fears the LORD, recall what I mentioned earlier — the closest Old Testament parallel to "fear" is "faith" in the New Testament, both describing a relationship rather than merely a set of rules to follow. It's this relationship, not personal righteousness, that primarily distinguishes believers from unbelievers. While Old Testament believers struggled under a covenant of external blessing and cursing tied to obedience to the Law, our struggle today isn't external but internal — the perpetual tension in this life between the Spirit of God leading us and our own sinful nature (cf. Galatians 5:17). We're not primarily interested in physical and material rewards, the way Israel was promised under the Old Covenant, but rather in confirming our names are written in heaven (cf. Luke 10:20), making our calling and election sure (2 Peter 1:5–11), and using whatever material wealth we've been given to win souls for Christ, so we'll be welcomed by them when we meet in heaven (cf. Luke 16:9).

This sharing has run very long already, but I hope it gives you a sense of how I approach passages like Psalm 112 — understood first in their own context, then connected to New Testament parallels to find relevant application for our lives today.

AI-Expanded Reflection

Worth adding a concrete illustration of exactly the pattern this comment is describing: Job himself is the clearest Old Testament counterexample to any simple "obedience guarantees prosperity" reading, since he was explicitly called blameless and upright by God directly (Job 1:8), yet lost everything anyway. Even within the Old Testament's own pages, the connection between righteousness and material blessing was never presented as an ironclad formula — Job, and later the author of Ecclesiastes (who observes righteous people perishing while the wicked prosper, Ecclesiastes 7:15), both complicate any flat reading of passages like Psalm 112 well before the New Covenant ever arrives to reframe the question further.