Today’s Gospel passage refers to the long-standing tradition about the anointed descendant of David, who in Jesus’s times was expected to be the Messiah, the ideal king of David’s lineage.

Jesus’s question is not so much a denial that the Messiah is David’s son, but a statement that he is much more than that.

To do this, Jesus takes a psalm – Ps 110, commonly regarded as a messianic psalm, and composed by King David himself – and asks: If the Lord (that is, Yahweh) himself said to my Lord (that is, the anointed king, the Messiah), “Sit at my right hand…”, how then can the Messiah be David’s son, and of his lineage?

Jesus is in effect insinuating that the messiah is more than a mere son of David. He has a more exalted, transcendent origin than David himself. While humanly descended from David, the Messiah had a character transcending mere blood ties with his ancestor, so David himself – inspired by the Spirit in composing the psalm – could refer to him by the name ‘Lord’ (kyrios), otherwise reserved for Yahweh.

We may say that this episode marks yet another step in the self-revelation of Jesus.