"Son of David" and "you are gods"

[jjje1995]

Good morning, brothers and sisters in Christ!

There are two passages in the Gospel I am finding rather hard to understand.

So, in the first chapter of Saint Matthew’s Gospel, which is believed to record Mary’s genealogy, it is recorded Jesus descends from David (Saint Matthew 1:6) but, latter on in Saint Matthew’s Gospel, it says

When some Pharisees gathered together, Jesus asked them, “What do you think about the Messiah? Whose descendant is he?” “He is David’s descendant,” they answered. “Why, then,” Jesus asked, “did the Spirit inspire David to call him ‘Lord’? David said, ‘The Lord said to my Lord: Sit here at my right side until I put your enemies under your feet.’ If, then, David called him ‘Lord,’ how can the Messiah be David’s descendant? No one was able to give Jesus any answer, and from that day on no one dared to ask him any more questions (Saint Matthew 22:41-46).

I find this hard to understand because it almost seems like Jesus is arguing the Messiah would not be David’s descendant when it explicitly says in Saint Matthew 1:1 “this is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David”.

On a different note, could someone shed some light on why Jesus used the verse from Psalm 82 which says

‘You are gods,’ I said; ‘all of you are children of the Most High’ (Psalms 82:6)

when the Jews were arguing with him in Saint John 10:34.

Thank you all in advance!

God bless you!

 

[BartholomewB]

In his book Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus, Joachim Jeremias draws attention to “the united witness of the New Testament that Jesus was of David’s line … Nowhere, during the lifetime of Jesus and his apostles, can we find the Jews ever questioning the Davidic origin of Jesus. Jewish polemic would scarcely have ignored such a powerful argument against Jesus’ messianic claims” (p. 291).

Further substantiating those claims, Jeremias quotes Hegesippus and Eusebius, where it is recorded that, when Domitian attempted to exterminate the descendants of David, the grandsons of Jesus’ brother Jude were denounced as descendants of David and confessed at their trial that they were so. Simeon, a cousin of Jesus, who succeeded James the Just as the head of the Christian community in Jerusalem, was similarly denounced as being of David’s line and crucified.

 

[midori]

Mary and Joseph were of the House of David-- Joseph being more strongly connected to the royal line. Jeconiah (Jehoiachin? Coniah? Yachin?) was the last “real” king of Israel, upon his father’s death. He was deposed by the Babylonians, and then replaced by his Uncle Zedekiah, who was later replaced by Gedaliah, an advisor. Out of the eleven generations between Jeconiah and Joseph, I don’t know how many of those were eldest-sons. It’s very possible they all were, but I haven’t read for sure.

Remember when the angel Gabriel visited Mary, his words included:

He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”

And Mary responds:

34 “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”

But she doesn’t say, “How will this be, since I’m not of the house of David?”

It’s important that Mary be of the house of David, but it’s also important that his adoptive father, Joseph, also be of the house of David as well: his ancestors have a more solid connection to the royal line.

Matthew was written with a Jewish audience in mind. It traces the genealogy from Abraham to David through Solomon, who was David’s legal successor, and ends with:

16 and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, and Mary was the mother of Jesus who is called the Messiah.

Luke, though, was writing with a Greek audience in mind, and traces Jesus’ physical lineage to David through Nathan, who obviously didn’t succeed his father as king. This starts with:

23 Now Jesus himself was about thirty years old when he began his ministry. He was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph, who was of Heli…

where scholars tend to think that it means Joseph was the son-in-law of Heli, rather than physically related to him, due to the original Greek phrasing. So that brings up the question of was-Mary’s-father-Heli-or-Joachim?, but I don’t know enough about Anglicized–ancient-Hebrew-names to go off on that tangent.

 

[midori]

Anyhow, if you go back to your Jeremiah, you’ve got a big long angry passage:

24 “As surely as I live,” declares the LORD, “even if you, Jehoiachin[c] son of Jehoiakim king of Judah, were a signet ring on my right hand, I would still pull you off. 25 I will deliver you into the hands of those who want to kill you, those you fear—Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and the Babylonians.[d] 26 I will hurl you and the mother who gave you birth into another country, where neither of you was born, and there you both will die. 27 You will never come back to the land you long to return to.”

28 Is this man Jehoiachin a despised, broken pot,
an object no one wants?
Why will he and his children be hurled out,
cast into a land they do not know?
29 O land, land, land,
hear the word of the LORD!
30 This is what the LORD says:
“Record this man as if childless,
a man who will not prosper in his lifetime,
for none of his offspring will prosper,
none will sit on the throne of David
or rule anymore in Judah.”

So, God was able to keep his curse intact: Joseph was related to Jeconiah, but Jesus was never physically related to him. And yet, through Joseph, Jesus was able to connect himself to the major royal line of David. And at the same time, he was still technically of the House of David, since Mary fulfilled that qualification on her own by being David’s direct descendant, albeit through a less significant branch of the family.

 

[Dan_Defender]

Psalm 82:1 'God presides in the great assembly; he gives judgment among the gods." The Hebrew word used is Elohim, which can be translated as judge or someone with authority over people. This same word is used in Exodus and translated as judge.

 

[Agathon]

“the united witness of the New Testament that Jesus was of David’s line … Nowhere, during the lifetime of Jesus and his apostles, can we find the Jews ever questioning the Davidic origin of Jesus. Jewish polemic would scarcely have ignored such a powerful argument against Jesus’ messianic claims”

What of John 7-8?

 

[Fauken]

I’m not sure I see anything in either John 7 or John 8 that disputes His Davidic lineage.

 

[Agathon]

Some Jews disputed Jesus’s claims to be the Messiah by saying He wasn’t from David’s line. Joachim Jeremias’s claim that no one disputed Jesus’s ancestry contradicts this.

 

[Fauken]

Can you provide a reference for the specific line of Scripture that shows they doubted this?

 

[GodSoughtMe]

Okay, so, your original question was why does Jesus ask the Pharisees how David can refer to the Messiah as “Lord,” when the Pharisees believe that the Messiah is David’s son.

Implicit, is that the Pharisees believed that ancestors do not refer to descendants as “lord,” particularly not descendants who simply inherit and/or restore dynasties that the ancestor founded.

Jesus doesn’t say that he isn’t a descendant of David. Jesus implies that their understanding of the relationship of the Messiah and King David is incorrect.

Contra their political sense of a Messiah, David did not found the Davidic dynasty. God did. The God-Man, Jesus, is both root of Jesse and flower of Jesse’s stem. That is why David calls the Messiah “Lord.” Because Messiah is greater than he - not ONLY his descendant.

 

[GodSoughtMe]

The second part of your original question was why Jn-10:34 says what it does.

The answer is in Jn10:35-36. He cites the Psalm, to argue that if God can call his people his sons in a general sense, then Jesus, who is truly God’s Son, who is truly important and set apart, can DEFINITELY be called God’s Son.

 

[Agathon]

Sure.

John 7:
40On hearing his words, some of the people said, “Surely this man is the Prophet.”

41Others said, “He is the Messiah.”

Still others asked, “How can the Messiah come from Galilee? 42Does not Scripture say that the Messiah will come from David’s descendants and from Bethlehem, the town where David lived?” 43Thus the people were divided because of Jesus. 44Some wanted to seize him, but no one laid a hand on him.