Bible Synapse
If Jesus is the son of David, why does he ask how the Christ can be David’s son?
Hard question · The life of Jesus · raised by 1 of the lists sceptics circulate
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The Pharisees say that the Christ is David’s son; Jesus asks how David, by the Spirit, can then call him “Lord” in Psalm 110:1.
While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, Saying, What think ye of Christ? whose son is he? They say unto him, The Son of David. He saith unto them, How then doth David in spirit call him Lord, saying, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool? If David then call him Lord, how is he his son? And no man was able to answer him a word, neither durst any man from that day forth ask him any more questions.
Teaching in the temple, Jesus asks how the scribes can say that the Christ is the son of David, when David calls him Lord.
And Jesus answered and said, while he taught in the temple, How say the scribes that Christ is the Son of David? For David himself said by the Holy Ghost, The Lord said to my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool. David therefore himself calleth him Lord; and whence is he then his son? And the common people heard him gladly.
Paul: God’s Son was “made of the seed of David according to the flesh”, and declared the Son of God by the resurrection.
Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh; And declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead:
Jesus: “I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star.”
I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star.
The objection
The New Testament calls Jesus the son of David again and again, from the first verse of Matthew to Paul’s letters (Matthew 1:1; Romans 1:3; 2 Timothy 2:8). Yet Jesus himself asks, “If David then call him Lord, how is he his son?”, as if to deny that the Messiah would be descended from David.
The answer
Jesus’ question was not a denial but a puzzle meant to make his hearers think. He first drew from the Pharisees the answer that the Christ is “The Son of David” (Matthew 22:42), and he did not correct it. Elsewhere he accepted the title when blind men called to him (Matthew 20:30–31) and defended the children who shouted it in the temple (Matthew 21:15–16). Then he quoted Psalm 110:1, where David, moved by the Spirit, calls the coming king ‘my Lord’ (Hebrew ladoni, ‘to my lord’). In Israel an ancestor did not call his descendant ‘lord’. So how could the Messiah be both David’s son and David’s superior?
The question has an answer, though the Pharisees did not give it: the Messiah would be more than a man descended from David. He would be David’s son by human birth, and David’s Lord because he is the Son of God, who was before David and would sit at God’s right hand. Paul puts both halves together in the very verse set against this one. Jesus was “made of the seed of David according to the flesh”, and “declared to be the Son of God with power” by his resurrection (Romans 1:3–4). Revelation says it in one phrase: “I am the root and the offspring of David” (Revelation 22:16). Barnes concludes that the only way to answer Jesus’ question is to admit that the Messiah was divine as well as human.
Other answers Christians give
More than a second David
Some add that Jesus was also correcting the popular hope of a Messiah who would simply be another David, a warrior king who would restore the nation. His question points to a king whose rule is greater than David’s, at God’s right hand. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown speak of a kingdom of which David himself is a subject.
From the classic commentators
Nor is there any way of answering the question but by the admission that the Messiah was divine as well as humanAlbert Barnes, Notes on the Bible, on Matthew 22:45 (1832)
Messiah is at once inferior to David as his son according to the flesh, and superior to him as the Lord of a kingdom of which David is himself a subject, not the sovereign.Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, Commentary, on Mark 12:37 (1871)
Sources
- Albert Barnes, Notes on the Bible: Matthew 22 (1832), at Bible Hub
- Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, Commentary: Mark 12 (1871), at Bible Hub