Who Is the Messiah? God or Unique Man?

Do you believe with the Messiah that the Father is "the only one who is God" (John 5:44)? The Father is called God 1320 times in the New Testament. The Messiah describes the one God, his Father, as "the only one who is true God" (John 17:3) and "the one who alone is God" (John 5:44).

Please consider how language works. In English you have no difficulty in recognizing the difference between "he" and "she." One letter "s" makes a big difference. You recognize also a big difference between god (lowercase g) and God (upper-case G). What about "employer" and "employee"? One letter makes all the difference. In Hebrew the words for "he" and "she" contain only a difference in the vowel sound -- hoo ("he") and hee ("she"). Few questions could be of greater importance than knowing who in the Bible is entitled to be called God (capital G) and who is not.

In Hebrew there is a word for "lord." It is ADON. This word refers 300 times to human lords (superiors) and 30 times to the LORD, i.e. God Himself.

There are two very special forms of this word ADON. Sometimes the letters -AI are added to the end, giving you the word ADONAI (sometimes written ADONAY). This word is known to the public because it rhymes with "El Shaddai" in the well-known song. [1] El Shaddai is another name for the One God. ADONAI means "the supreme Lord."

The word ADON may also have the letter "I" added to it, giving the form ADONI (pronounced adonee).

Now in Psalm 110:1 we have a uniquely important verse. This verse appears in the New Testament 23 times. (Psalm 110:4 is quoted or alluded to another 10 times.) Many verses are cited once or twice in the New Testament. But these verses -- Psalm 110:1, 4 -- are mentioned 33 times! Psalm 110:1 is a key to the identity of God and the Messiah, and to the coming Kingdom (the heart of the Gospel: Luke 4:43, Acts 8:12, etc.). Psalm 110:1 will yet have an explosive effect and put to an end all current arguments about who God and the Messiah are.

The Messiah quoted this verse (as reported by Matthew, Mark and Luke) to put an end to the counter-arguments of the religious authorities of his day, the Pharisees (see Matthew 22:41-46). The Messiah, as master rabbi, settled all disputes with Psalm 110:1.

This Psalm covers the whole range of the New Testament and the Messiah is recorded as quoting it no less than seven times. It is a favorite "proof-text" of the New Testament Christians, but it has been abused and suppressed by some commentaries and even Bible translations.

The Psalm is a special divine oracle. The text reads "The oracle of YHVH (LORD) to my lord: 'Sit at My right hand until I put your enemies under your feet'" (Psalm 110:1).

The first "Lord" is the word YHVH which appears in many English versions as "LORD" (all capitals).

The second lord is adoni (my lord). We have already noted that the Hebrew word ADON (lord) has a special ending on it when it refers to the One God -- ADONAI (449 times in the Old Testament). But when the word has the ending 'i,' i.e. adoni, it never refers to God but always to a human superior (occasionally an angel). So we know that the Messiah Yeshua is carefully distinguished from ADONAI (God). Yeshua is the human superior of David, David's lord, adoni. It is misleading for translators to capitalize that second lord, giving the impression that the Messiah is the Lord God, which in the Bible he never is!

This Psalm was believed to be a Messianic oracle both by the Messiah and by the rabbis of his day. Yeshua knew that he, the Messiah, was David's lord as well as David's son. The Pharisees were not prepared to recognize the Messiah as the lord of David, though they knew he was a descendant of David.

The Hebrew language is precise and the rabbis always held the name of the One God in the highest reverence. That is why they reserved the form ADONAI for the Lord God alone. (Jews to this day read the word ADONAI when they come to the personal name for God -- YHVH).

The Old Testament has little ways of distinguishing words, which have momentous importance in terms of their meaning. Let me give you another example: the word A VEER means strong or powerful. From the New International Dictionary of OT Theology and Exegesis: "It is widely believed that the reason why the Old Testament has two forms of the adjective [AVEER] is because the Massoretes wished to distinguish the use of the word when applied to YEHOVAH from its use in other contexts" (Vol. 1, p. 232).

When not used of the One God, the form has an extra dot inside the "V" and is then pronounced ABEER. ABEER (with the dot) often refers to a mighty man, sometimes to the "stout of heart," once to an angel and sometimes to a bull or a mighty steed.

The lack of a dot makes a huge difference. A VEER refers to God. ABEER is a non-divine reference.

So it is with the forms of Lord, ADONAI and ADONI. ADONAI is reserved for the One God alone. No human is addressed as ADONAI. On the other hand ADONI is reserved for human superiors. The Messiah is called ADONI, the lord of David, but never ADONAI, the One God.

Now note this interesting fact. The King James Version always translated ADONAI as "Lord" (with initial capital "L"). It translated YHVH as "LORD" (all capitals).

On 193 occasions it translated ADONI as "lord" (lower-case "1"), "sir," or "master." But on two occasions only it broke its own rule and put a capital on "Lord " -- in Psalm 110:1 and Daniel 12:8 (an angel). But the word is not ADONAI, but ADONI. The RV and RSV and the NEB corrected the error and wrote "lord" (lower-case letters), preserving the correct title for the Messiah, who is the supreme human being.

Yeshua is ADONI the Messiah, not ADONAI, the One God. The one God is one Person only. How do we know this (apart from Psalm 110:1)? The One God of Hebrew monotheism (the monotheism of the Messiah, Mark 12:29) is described by personal pronouns in the singular (I, Me, Him, Thou, Thee, Thy, My, His) thousands upon thousands of times. Singular pronouns tell you that a person is one individual, not more. They describe a being who is one Person, not three. God is one singular and single Person. There are thus thousands of testimonies in the Bible to the unity of God, what scholars would call "unitary monotheism."

The One God is distinguished as ADONAI (449 times) from adoni, a human lord (195 times). This gives you 644 opportunities to see the difference between God and man, based on the word "lord"! The Messiah, Son of God, is designated as adoni, not Adonai.

"There is one God, the Father" (Paul, 1 Corinthians 8:6). There are two Lords (Psalm 110:1). The Father is the one Lord God and Yeshua is the lord Messiah, the Son of God (Matthew 16:16). Belief that Yeshua is the Messiah, the Son of God is the whole point of John's Gospel (John 20:31). It is also the whole point of the whole Bible. Note how Luke introduced Yeshua as the lord Messiah, literally "the Messiah lord" (Luke 2:11). Mary is the mother of "my lord" (Luke 1:43), certainly not the mother of God!

The Messiah describes the one God, his Father, as "the only one who is true God" (John 17:3) and "the one who alone is God" (John 5:44). "The one who alone is God" is another way of saying "the only one who is God." The Messiah was talking about the Father. If the Father is "the only one who is God," and the Messiah is a different person, the Messiah is distinguished from the one God. If the Father is "the only one who is true God," no one else can be! These are the universally accepted laws of language with which we all agree.

Do you believe with the Messiah that the Father is "the only one who is God" (John 5:44)? The Father is called God 1320 times in the New Testament. The word "God" is used of the Messiah twice for certain. But don't forget that in the first century A.D. elevated humans were sometimes called "God." This is also true in the Bible. The judges of Israel were called "gods" (Psalm 82:6). The Messiah used that verse to demonstrate that he was claiming to be the Son of God, not God Himself (John 10:34-36). The Roman emperor was also called "God." This is a use of "God" to which we are not accustomed. But the Bible must be understood in its own context, not ours. Without that basic key to interpretation we are likely to misread the Bible at the most fundamental level.

Psalm 2 is a perfect parallel to Psalm 110:1. In that psalm the One God YHVH speaks to My Son (Psalm 2:7). That person, who is as distinct from YHVH as any son is distinct from his father, is also called "the LORD's Messiah" (2:2; cp. Luke 2:26). (Note the valuable key provided by equivalent phrases: the one defines the other to tell us who the Messiah is.) That King/Son/Messiah is the Yeshua of the Bible: the Son of the One God, "the lord Messiah" (Luke 2:11), "the Lord's Messiah" (Luke 2:26).

Note that in the New Testament God is called "the God of our lord Jesus Christ" (Ephesians 1:17). That should tell you that they are not coequal! There is one Lord God and one lord Messiah. In Scripture they are separate individuals, working in the closest harmony. The Messiah is the obedient Son of his Father. The Father is the only one who is God. The Messiah functions as the perfectly obedient agent of his Father who "begat" him. To be "begotten," of course, is to have a beginning in time, quite contrary to popular theories, dating from the "church fathers," that the Son had no beginning. Or as some said, the Son had a "beginningless beginning." If he had no beginning he could not, by simple definition of words, be "begotten" by his Father, God!

Should anyone be tempted to deny the validity of the vowel points, there is a way to demonstrate that the difference between "the Lord" (Adonai) and "my lord" (adoni) existed in the time of the Messiah and before. The New Testament, when it quotes Psalm 110:1, renders l'adoni as "to my lord" (to kurio mou). But it renders Adonai (Psalm 110:5 and very often elsewhere) as "the Lord" (kurios). This proves that the difference between Adonai and adoni was recognized and reported in Greek long before the Masoretic vowel points fixed the ancient, oral tradition permanently in writing. The authoritative Greek of the New Testament demonstrates that the second lord of the Psalm was in fact l'adoni, rendered in both the LXX (Septuagint) and in the New Testament as "to my lord." The New Testament merely confirms authoritatively that the pointing l'adoni was the authoritative reading of the Old Testament.

Don't forget, too, the prodigious accuracy of the Masoretes who copied the text. Between 600 and 1000 A.D. they "hedged in" the consonantal text with minute attention to accuracy and detail. "They added vowel points above and below the consonants to preserve as perfectly as possible the accompanying tradition of pronunciation." [2] Rabbi Ishmael cautioned: "My son, be careful, because your work is the work of heaven; should you omit (even) one letter or add (even) one letter, the whole world would be destroyed." [3]

[1] "El Shaddai" by Amy Grant: "El Shaddai, El Shaddai, El-Elyon na Adonai..."

[2] New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis, Vol. I, p. 60.

Hope of Israel Ministries -- Correcting the Errors of Modern "Christianity"!

Hope of Israel Ministries
P.O. Box 853
Azusa, CA 91702, U.S.A.
www.hope-of-israel.org

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