Psalm 110– A Psalm of David- 1 Yahweh said to my Lord, “Sit at My right hand, till I make Your enemies Your footstool.” 2 Yahweh shall send the rod of Your strength out of Zion. Rule in the midst of Your enemies! 3 Your people shall be volunteers in the day of Your power; in the beauties of holiness, from the womb of the morning, You have the dew of Your youth. 4 Yahweh has sworn and will not relent, “You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.” 5 Yahweh is at Your right hand; He shall execute kings in the day of His wrath. 6 He shall judge among the nations, He shall fill the places with dead bodies,He shall execute the heads of many countries. 7 He shall drink of the brook by the wayside; therefore He shall lift up the head.
“’A Psalm of David,’ but not about David, nor "of any other mere man, this psalm cannot be understood. Of the Messiah, and only of Him, it was understood in the ancient church.” (Joseph Sutcliffe) Here is “the sun of our faith, the treasure of holy writ: 'verbis brevis, sensu infinitus', (saith Augustine,) short in words, but in sense infinite.”—(John Prideaux) Jesus will be "both Priest and King… The sixteenth psalm is addressed to Jesus as Risen, the twenty-fourth as King of Glory, the 110th as at God’s Right Hand.” (James Nisbet)
“Yahweh said to my Lord (1a) —Jehovah La-Adonai—Jehovah said to my Adonai [pronounced ‘Adonóy.] But who is Adonai? The Chaldaic reads, Jehovah said to His eternal Word; that is, to Christ, the Word and Wisdom of the Father.” (Joseph Sutcliffe) (1) Jesus quoted Psalm 110:1 (see Matthew 22:44), “when being questioned by the scribes concerning the authority by which He taught. Jesus said to His questioners, ‘David therefore calleth Him Adonai, how is He then his son?’ (Luke 20:44)… After He had put them to silence, no man dared ask Him any question at all (Mark 12:34; Luke 20:39,40).” (Oliver F. Fauss) It is also quoted in Hebrews 1:13, “to prove Him higher far than angels. It is brought forward by Peter, Ac 2:34, to show Him Lord as well as Christ. It is referred to in Hebrews 10:12,13, as declaring that Jesus has satisfactorily finished what He undertook to accomplish on earth ‘the one sacrifice for ever’, and is henceforth on that seat of divine honour ‘expecting till His enemies be made His footstool’ (1b) in the day of His Second Coming.” (Andrew A. Behar) “The victorious king placed his feet on the necks of his vanquished foe (cf. Joshua 10:24; 1 Kings 5:3; Isaiah 51:23)." (VanGemeren) Thus will Christ do metaphorically.
“‘Yahweh shall send the rod of Your strength out of Zion (2a)— for salvation is of the Jews, John 4:22, Isaiah 2:3, Micah 4:1-2 — that is, the gospel, that sceptre of Christ’s kingdom, that power of God to salvation, unto as many as believe, mighty through God to work wonders, 2 Corinthians 10:5, Acts 20:32, even the preaching of Christ’s cross.” (John Trapp) “Isaiah and Micah use similar language: ‘Out of Zion shall go forth the Law.’ Christ, as the King of kings, gave the apostles power and authority to subjugate the nations to the Christian faith” (Joseph Sutcliffe) Jesus command the apostles “not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the Promise of the Father,” etc. (Acts 1:4-8)— “Rule in the midst of Your enemies!’ (2b) who shall see it, and do what they can to oppose Thy dominion, but shall never be able to hinder it, but shall split themselves against it.” (Matthew Poole) For the Kingdom of Messiah “is set up not by destroying them, but by subduing them, so that they become His willing servants. They yield to Him, and He rules over them. It is not here a commission to cut them off, but one much more difficult of execution,—to make them His friends, and to dispose them to submit to His authority.” (Albert Barnes)
“’Your people shall be volunteers in the day of Your power; in the beauties of holiness,’ (3a)... so that they do not need the constraints of laws or threats, because they are led by the Spirit of God, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there, also, is liberty.” (Wolfgang Musculus) “They will be holy, in contrast to the unholy whom Messiah will subdue. They will be as youthful warriors, namely, strong and energetic.” (Dr. Thomas B. Constable) — “‘from the womb of the morning, You have the dew of Your youth.’ (3b) Rabbi Jizhac Arama in Genesis, writes, ‘We find no man whose nativity was foretold, as anterior to the nativity of his father and mother, except the Messiah. Therefore it is presignified, ‘from the womb of the morning’; that is, before thy mother was created, thou hast the dew of thy youth. So is the import of the text, ‘Before the sun, Thy name was promulged, because the name of our Messiah subsisted immoveably before the creation of the sun.’” (Joseph Sutcliffe)
“Yahweh has sworn…, ‘You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.’ (4) David, as well as other prophets, foretold the Christ's coming to the world. In Psalm 110 David even referred to the order of His priesthood. He declared, ‘Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek.’ So He was of the order Melchizedek, rather than of the order of Aaron. This is brought out more fully in Hebrews 6:17 through 7:21. [Like Melchizedek, Jesus was ‘without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like the Son of God, remains a priest continually.” (Heb 7:2)]’ (Oliver F. Fauss)—“'And will not repent.' The meaning of this phrase is, that the priesthood of Christ is not like that of Aaron, which was after a time to expire, and is now actually with all the ceremonial law abolished, but a priesthood never to be altered or changed.” (Daniel Featley) “What doctrine doth the Scripture afford more comfortable to a drooping soul than this, that God hath sworn His Son a priest forever, to sanctify our persons, and purge our sins, and tender all our petitions to His Father? What sin is so heinous, for which such a Priest cannot satisfy by the oblation of Himself? What cause so desperate, in which such an Advocate if He will plead, may not prevail? We may be sure God will not be hard to be intreated of us, Who Himself hath appointed us such an Intercessor, to Whom He can deny nothing; and to that end hath appointed Him to sit at His right hand to make intercession for us.” (Abraham Wright)
Jesus will execute Judgment on even "kings in the day of His wrath.’— in the day of battle, when He shall contend with them.” (Matthew Poole) “Note that it is not simply said, He will strike through kings in His wrath, but in the day of His wrath. Therefore as there is a time of grace and patience, so there is also an appointed time of wrath and vengeance of God. Frequent mention is made of this in the sacred Scriptures, that we may be admonished that the wicked will not be left always unpunished.” (Wolfgang Museulus) “’He shall judge among the nations,’… condemn and punish them, as it is explained in the following clauses, and as this word is used, Genesis 15:14 Romans 2:1,2 1 Peter 4:6, and elsewhere. ’He shall fill the places with dead bodies,’ the places; or, the place of battle, which is necessarily supposed in the fight, and therefore may very well be understood. Dead bodies of his enemies, slain by His hand, and lying in the field in great numbers and heaps, and that unburied, to their greater infamy. ‘He shall execute the heads of many countries.’ The meaning is, that none of Christ’s enemies, though never so many or great, and their empire be never so large and potent, shall be able to withstand his force, or escape out of his hand; and that he shall not only destroy the common soldiers, but also their greatest commanders and princes, who in such cases do frequently make their escape.” (Matthew Poole)
“‘He shall drink of the brook by the wayside; therefore He shall lift up the head.’ So swiftly shall He march to conquest that He shall not stay for refreshment, but drink as He hastens on. Like Gideon's men that lapped, He shall throw His heart into the fray and cut it short in righteousness, because a short work will the Lord make in the earth." (C. H. Spurgeon)