Acts 2:34

St. Peter does not demand belief upon his own assertion, but he again appeals to the Scriptures, and to words which could not have received a fulfilment in the case of David. In this appeal he reproduces the very words in which, some seven weeks before, our Lord Himself had convicted the scribes of error in their interpretation of this same Psalm (Matthew 22:44; Mark 12:35; Luke 20:41), and, “unlearned” in the eyes of the scribes, had answered the question which they could not answer, how David's Son was also David's Lord. No passage of Scripture is so constantly referred to in the N.T. as this 110th Psalm, cf. references above, and also 1 Corinthians 15:25; Hebrews 1:13; Hebrews 5:6; Hebrews 7:17; Hebrews 7:21; Hebrews 10:13. The Psalm was always regarded as Messianic by the Jews (Weber, Jüdische Theologie, p. 357 (1897); Edersheim, Jesus the Messiah, ii., 720 (Appendix); Cheyne, Origin of the Psalter, p. 35; Driver, Introduction to O. T., pp. 362, 363; and if it had not been so in the time of our Lord, it is obvious that His argument would have missed its point if those to whom He addressed His question “What think ye of the Christ?” could have answered that David was not speaking of the coming Messiah. For earlier interpretations of the Psalm, and the patristic testimony to its Messianic character, see Speaker's Commentary, iv., 427, and on the authorship see Gifford, Authorship of the 110 th. Psalm, with Appendix, 1895 (SPCK), and Delitzsch, Psalms, iii., pp. 163 176, E.T. κάθου ἐκ δεξιῶν μου : κάθου contracted for κάθησο (cf. also Mark 12:36; Hebrews 1:13); this “popular” form, which is also found in the Fragments of the comic writers, is the present imperative of κάθημαι in modern Greek, Kennedy, Sources of N. T. Greek, p. 162. In the LXX it is frequently used (see Hatch and Redpath, sub. v.). ἕως : the word does not imply that Christ shall cease to reign subsequently: the word here, as elsewhere, does not imply that what is expressed will only have place up to a certain time (cf. Genesis 33:15; Deuteronomy 7:4; 2 Chronicles 6:23; cf. 1 Timothy 4:13), rather is it true to say that Christ will only then rightly rule, when He has subjugated all His enemies. ἄν with ἕως as here, where it is left doubtful when that will take place to which it is said a thing will continue (Grimm-Thayer, and instances sub ἕως, i., 1 b). ὑποπόδιον, cf. Joshua 10:24, referring to the custom of conquering kings placing their feet upon the necks of their conquered enemies (so Blass, in loco, amongst recent commentators).