Yahweh says to my Lord:
“Sit at my right hand,
until I make your enemies your footstool.”
Psalm 110 starts with the Father calling the Son to sit on His throne until His enemies are made His footstool. This is of course a position of victory; His enemies are under His feet. But the footstool is just that: a footstool, a resting place for the feet. David said in 1 Chronicles 28, “I had it in my heart to build a house of rest for the ark of the covenant of Yahweh and for the footstool of our God.” Yahweh is enthroned above the cherubim, and rests with His feet on the cover of the ark. Psalms 99 and 132 say, “let us worship at His footstool.” His people come to Him in His house of rest to worship at His feet. So, even His enemies will be made a resting place for His feet.
It also says that His scepter goes out from Zion. It is not a limited reign; He doesn’t just rule over His own people, but over the whole world, even in the midst of His enemies. This King is not like other kings over Israel, who were separated from the priesthood. He is made priest after the order of Melchizedek, the Gentile priest-king who blessed Abraham with bread and wine and received from him a tithe after his victory in battle. The book of Hebrews points out that this necessitates a change in the law, and in fact sets aside the law and the Aaronic priesthood as weak and unable to bring perfection. But the priesthood of the Christ is perfect and is able to perfect those who draw near.
He fills the nations with corpses. This same picture is used in Revelation 19, where Jesus rides out as a king conquering the nations by the sword of His mouth. It is the word, the gospel, that strikes down the nations. They must die, but Christ has mastered death. What He kills, He also raises to new life.
Verse 6 says, “He will shatter chiefs over the wide earth.” This “chiefs”, although not necessarily an inaccurate translation, obscures the wordplay between the last two verses. He will shatter heads, and He will lift up His head. Christ is the head-crusher, the seed of the woman that crushes the head of the serpent. And because He humbled Himself to death, God raised Him up, lifting up His head, and seated Him at His right Hand.
