David's Son is his Lord?

I've been confused about Jesus' retort to the Pharisees when he quoted from Psalm 110 saying, "The Lord said to my Lord, 'Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet.'"

Jesus continues, "David calls him Lord, so how can he be his son?" The crowds derives great enjoyment from hearing Jesus stump the scribes. This is in Mark 12.

Maybe it seems obvious to you, but I had to study this a little to make sense of why the retort packed a punch which the crowds found interesting.

Here's the deal. There was a Messianic expectation during this period, and the expected Messiah was thought to come from the line of David. The Jews awaited a hero who would rescue the Jews from political oppression and restore the country to its former glory. This was based on the prophecies of Isaiah and others.

However, and this is what Jesus picks up on, there is also evidence in scripture that the coming Messiah would be greater than the former kings, even king David. Psalm 110 makes this point. It is a Psalm of David, but David is not writing about his own kingship. David writes that "the Lord declares to my Lord..." The first "Lord" is the tetragramaton, referring to the God of Abraham, the Great "I Am." The second "Lord" is "Adonai," which is synonymous to "lord" as a title of headship or authority. Clearly, David intends to convey a dual allegiance to two "Lords," one who is God, Yahweh, and the other, one who sits at Yahweh's right hand and functions both as eternal priest and king of the world. How David could conceive of a second "Lord," and how he envisioned the relationship between these two Lords is impossible to determine. Except that Jesus says that he spoke through the Holy Spirit.

Jesus rightly points out that the position of Messiah, the "Adonai" of Psalm 110, is greater than David. But Jesus uses this point to baffle the scribes by asking them how the Messiah could be David's son if the Messiah is greater than David?" The premise that jeopardizes this assertion is that a son (or descendant) cannot be greater than his father. This reverses the Mosaic law, specifically, the fifth commandment, which places the children in a position of subservience to the parents. For David to call his son (or his descendent) his Lord would be absurd (and unlawful).

The scribes stand speechless because there is no way to respond to this. Either they must deny that the Messiah is the Son of David, or they must deny that the Messiah is greater than David. If they deny that the Messiah is the son of David, but affirm that the Messiah is greater than David, then they must say that the Messiah will have royal blood based outside of David's bloodline. If they deny that the Messiah is greater than David, but maintain that the Messiah is the Son of David, then they contradict Psalm 110 and must settle for a less than David-like king to rescue them from Roman oppression.

To avoid either of these pitfalls, the scribes have only option -- to affirm the divine fatherhood of the Messiah as the source of his royalty, and to affirm the greatness of the Messiah as being the Lord of David in accord with the scriptures. The problem with this option is that it requires David-like submission to the Son of David because this Messiah is also the Son of God.