Psalm 110:1
The LORD Said to My Lord

Objection 1 · Adoni Never Refers to God

Singer states that אֲדֹנִי (adoni) "never refers to God anywhere in the Bible" and is used only to address a person. He points to Genesis 24:54 (Eliezer addressing Abraham) and Genesis 32:4(5) (Jacob addressing Esau) as identical Hebrew forms used of ordinary human superiors, and argues Christian translations inconsistently capitalize "Lord" only at Psalm 110:1, where it serves their purposes.

Weight: The lexical observation is correct, and the capitalization critique has real merit as a translation-practice point — the Hebrew word is identical in all three passages, and treating it differently in English is inconsistent. But this doesn't touch the actual argument for a messianic or exalted reading, which was never built on the word adoni carrying inherent divine meaning. The case rests on the psalm's other content — an eternal, non-Levitical priesthood (v. 4) and enthronement at God's own right hand (v. 1) — not on this one word. Singer is arguing against a claim the strongest form of the messianic reading doesn't make.

Objection 2 · David Wrote It About Himself, for the Levites to Sing

Singer's primary alternative: David composed the psalm in the third person so that the Levitical singers would address him as "my lord" — "my lord" simply means David, sung by his own choir.

Weight: This requires reading the entire psalm as though someone other than David is speaking, despite the superscription לְדָוִד ("of David") and the fact that the psalm's opening verb (נְאֻם, "an oracle/utterance of") is the standard formula introducing a divine word received and reported by a prophet, not a court composition written for others to perform about him. It is also the reading Matthew 22 directly assumes is false: Jesus's question to the Pharisees only works if David is himself the speaker referring to someone he calls his superior — a puzzle this objection dissolves only by denying the premise the exchange is built on.

Objection 3 · "My Lord" Is Abraham

A second alternative Singer draws on: the "lord" is Abraham, connecting the psalm to Genesis 14's war of the kings, where Abraham (aided by his household) defeats a coalition of eastern kings — read against Isaiah 41:2's "who raised up one from the east." On this reading, David is not speaking in his own present at all, but recalling or re-singing an oracle about his ancestor's ancient victory.

Weight: This is a genuine classical rabbinic reading, and it should be credited as such rather than dismissed — Rashi records it. But Rashi himself flags the difficulty: the psalm speaks of "Zion" (v. 2), which was David's city, centuries after Abraham and entirely anachronistic to an Abraham-era setting. A native, careful reader of the Hebrew already found this reading strained on its own terms.

Objection 4 · "My Lord" Is a Hasmonean Priest-King

A third, more recent alternative treats the psalm as a much later composition, written to legitimize the Hasmonean dynasty's unprecedented combination of the kingship and the high priesthood — offices Torah keeps strictly separate (kingship to Judah, priesthood to Levi) — starting with Simon Thassi in the second century BCE.

Weight: This is a modern historical-critical hypothesis about the psalm's date and setting, not a classical Jewish exegetical tradition — a different kind of claim from Objections 2 and 3, and one that requires abandoning the Davidic superscription altogether, roughly eight centuries after David's own lifetime. It cannot be combined with Objection 2 (David as both author and referent) without contradiction. Singer's readiness to reach for whichever of these three explanations suits the moment — David, or Abraham, or a Hasmonean king he never composed a word of — is itself the tell: they share no common premise about who wrote the psalm or when.

Objection 5 · Matthew 22 Wouldn't Have Puzzled the Pharisees

Singer argues that first-century listeners with even modest Hebrew would have recognized adoni as ordinary human address and would not have found Jesus's question genuinely difficult.

Weight: This misreads what puzzle Jesus is actually posing. The difficulty was never a claim that adoni means "God" — it's a social and genealogical paradox that has nothing to do with which Hebrew word is used: in the ancient Near Eastern world, and in Israel specifically, an ancestor does not address his own descendant as a social or military superior. David has no human superior in his own kingdom; for him to call his own future offspring "my lord" while David himself still reigns is the puzzle, regardless of whether that word is adoni, adonai, or any other term. Matthew 22:46 records that "no one was able to answer him a word" — a claim about the Pharisees' actual, recorded response to a real interpretive difficulty, not one Singer's point about vocabulary resolves.

Midrash Tehillim 18:29

"R. Yudan said in the name of R. Hama: In the time-to-come, when the Holy One, blessed be He, seats the lord Messiah at His right hand, as is said, 'The LORD says to my lord: Sit at My right hand' (Psalm 110:1), and seats Abraham at His left, Abraham's face will turn pale, and he will say to the Lord: 'My son's son sits at the right, and I at the left!' Thereupon the Holy One, blessed be He, will comfort Abraham, saying: 'Your son's son is at My right, but I, in a manner of speaking, am at your right': The Lord is at your right hand (Psalm 110:5)." (trans. William G. Braude, Yale University Press)

This is a third figure — distinct from both David and Abraham — occupying the seat of honor Psalm 110:1 describes, with Abraham himself present in the same scene as a separate, subordinate participant. This is precisely the messianic reading of "my lord" that Objection 1 through 4 collectively deny has any legitimate Jewish basis. It doesn't come from Christian exegesis; it comes from within the Midrashic tradition.