“Sit at My right hand until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet.”
January 25th, 2009 by Brian
Philippians 2:9-11Â For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. [NASB]
For trinitarians, these verses present the idea that Jesus in not only God, but that the name God has given him is Yahweh, which the Old Testament identifies as the name of God. Below are the notes from the ESV Study Bible for these verses:
Phil. 2:9 . . . This name is not specified here, but many think it refers to the name Yahweh (Hb. YHWH), God’s personal name, which in the Septuagint is regularly translated as Greek Kyrios, “Lord,†the name specified in Phil. 2:11. In any case, Paul means that the eternal Son of God received a status and authority (cf. Matt. 28:18 and note on Acts 2:33) that had not been his before he became incarnate as both God and man. Jesus’ being given this name is a sign that he exercises his messianic authority in the name of Yahweh.
Phil. 2:10–11 While Christ now bears the divine name Yahweh (“Lordâ€), he is still worshiped with his human name, Jesus, since it was in the flesh that he most clearly displayed his divine glory to the world. . . .
It seems to me that essential to understanding these verses is the decree stated in Psalm 110:1:
The LORD says to my Lord: “Sit at My right hand until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet.”
That Jesus is Lord relates itself to the second “lord” in Psalm 110:1. The verse more literally reads:
Yahweh says to my lord (Hebrew adoni [adon, “lord” + i, “my”]):Â “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.”
Philippians 2 is not proclaiming that Jesus has the name Yahweh, but rather that God has made him Lord and made his name (which is “Jesus”) above all other names.
I know this is way off topic… but what do we make of Psalm 110 being an enthronement psalm? “Sitting at my right hand” means that Jesus’ rule has begun, does it not?
Hi John O.,
Indeed …..
Taking Daniel’s prophecy into consideration about the enthronement of the Messiah when he ascended up to the Ancient of Days, and considering what Peter had to say at Pentecost, I would say that Jesus’ reign (kingdom) has indeed begun almost 2000 years ago.
The rule for which the rule of David (described, for example, by the term “throne of David”) was the earthly temporal pysical type is the rule of the Messiah from his throne which is heavenly eternal spiritual.
Cheers,
Wolfgang
JohnO,
Psalm 110 is nicely divided into two events. The first being “sit at my right hand” the second being “stretch forth your strong scepter from Zion, rule in the midst of your enemies.” These two events are separated chronologically by the statement “until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.”
Jesus is clearly at the right hand of God today, however, he is not ruling from Zion in the midst of his enemies. This is clearly future. The beauty of this oracle is that it makes room for the two advents of Messiah, which is why the NT refers back to this verse an astounding 23 times.
To de-politicize the kingdom that Jesus will one day establish on earth makes this Psalm impossible to interpret as a whole. In reference to Daniel 7.13-14 it is clear from Mat 24 that the coming of the Son of Man results in the gathering together of the saints and a time of judgment for the world.
If we don’t understand these simple themes the Bible is likely to be a very confusing book.
ESV study bible is a joke. One of mt professors who is a NT translator for the NLT study bible said that even other scholars think that the ESV is garbage.
Stick with NASB (and Greek).
Dustin
Wolfgang,
Daniel 7 has nothing to do with enthronement, nor of literally going to heaven, that is not how the people in Second Temple times read these texts (and that is based on how they used and responded to this text in their other writings).
Sean,
I’m not sure that “until” makes the passage mean “sit down and wait” until it is your turn. Rather, to sit at the right hand of YHWH clearly means to become King, does it not? Isn’t that what happens when the ceremony for the new king ends? He sits in his seat and his reign begins?
Dustin,
I’ll be looking for that endorsement on the dust cover of the next printing.
Dustin,
You took the opinion of someone that worked on the second worst translation of all time: the NLT?
lol
The name (character) of Jesus is the same as the name (character)
of God. Jesus lived in the name of God while ministering in the days
of his flesh here upon earth. He walked in the name of the Lord
God without falling short. He declared the name of God in all his
days. God was in all of his steps.
May we all come to do all in the name of Jesus, that we see his
kingdom come. The word of God shall prevail. His kingdom will
reign on this earth. His word is producing fruit. The gospel is going
over the whole earth. Though trouble comes, the word of God comes out on top. It will prevail in Jesus’s name.
Sean, as we all know, each translation has a purpose and a target audience. The NASB is attempting to translate very literally, with a word for word ideal. The NLT is trying to translate in an idea for idea. If we base what they were attempting, then they were quite successful at it.
My point was that the ESV has had some terrible reviews from the scholarly guild. In one of my final papers I was told by another professor that the ESV was as unnaccaptable to quote as the KJV!
Dustin
They consider the KJV to be unacceptable to quote? Why is that? I know it’s hard for some people to understand because of archaic English, but I didn’t think it was “unacceptable.”
Mark,
Unacceptable because it uses very late manuscripts.
JohnO,
I knew it was considered less accurate in some passages because of that, but I didn’t know it was considered unacceptable. That must really annoy the King James Only crowd!
Dustin,
NLT target audience = gullible people
NLT translation purpose = to paraphrase the Scripture so as to leave no ambiguity of what we want the text to say
Distracted from the distraction 😉
Mark,
When you compare the manuscripts used to translate the KJV with the much newer mss we have for the modern translations, the differences are astonishing!
A prime example is the book of Revelation, which in a Greek version was unavailable to the KJV translators, so they used the Latin Vulgate instead. Therefore, the book of Revelation used in the KJV went from Greek to Latin to 1611 English, hardly acceptable now that we have to read through 3 languages!
Dustin
Getting back to the original subject of the thread……Psalm 110:1 and its importance in clearly proving who Jesus IS (The lord Messiah) and who he is NOT (Yahweh God), have any of you read Anthony Buzzard’s Focus on the Kingdom newsletter for this month (Jan 2009)? The ENTIRE thing (all 7 pages) is devoted to this very topic. Anthony’s article is entitled “Breaking the Spell of Tradition” and he just made the online PDF version of it available on his website over the weekend (it wasn’t there on Friday when I first checked).
Here are just a few paragraphs (first two from pg. 2, third from pg. 7) from this excellent piece by Anthony:
For a criticism of ESV see http://zondervan.typepad.com/koinonia/2008/12/i-have-to-admit-im-a-bit-of-an-iconoclast-nothing-drives-me-crazy-more-than-smug-satisfaction-or-blind-acceptance-by-t.html
It seems Ron forgot to close a blockquote or a font tag, everything below shows up in green.
On topic now, Ron wrote
I’ve read a very similar thing more than a year ago in “Divine Truth or Human Tradition?: A Reconsideration of the Roman Catholic-Protestant Doctrine of the Trinity in Light of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures” by Patrick Navas. Excellent book.
It seems the criticisms against the ESV is that it is does not paraphrase enough to make it easy to read. That criticism, to me, is not a negative. I’d rather have closer contact with the languages behind the text than trust some translator to waive his dynamic equivalence wand over the text and obliterate all of the ambiguities that were in the original language.
I’ve got Patrick’s book on the shelf. Haven’t cracked it yet, after this whopping 700pager I’m reading I think I’m going to need a break from the thick books.
Patrick’s a great guy. I’ve enjoyed a number of fruitful email exchanges with him. Have you all listened to his debate against Gene Cook? It’s pretty good. click here to listen
Patrick’s book is only 565 pages 🙂 I haven’t finished it to this day…
Sean,
I fully agree. But he also indicates there are several “Lexical Errors and Problems”…