petitioning so great a benefit, the honorific title which Is employed Is apt to be charged with a far richer meaning than mere courtesy or respect. And Jesus received It In this case at its full value; In a sense bearing some relation to His own appellative use of the same term, 'Lord' (xupcoc:)^ when He declared Himself ' Lord of the Sabbath ' and ' David's Lord ' as well as his ' Son ' (2"^ 12^^'^^). It Is In this appella- tive use of the term ' Lord ' by Jesus Indeed that we may discover the deepest significance of the application of that title to Him (i^ 2-^ 11^ 1 236,37 j-j^a 13^^]). It Is no doubt sometimes very difficult to determine whether in a given Instance it refers to God or to Jesus^*, a fact which has Its significance. But the certain cases will themselves carry us very far. When, for example, Jesus Is quoted as declaring that " the Son of Man Is Lord even of the Sabbath " (or, perhaps, " of the Sab- bath, too"), the implication Is that He Is Lord of much more than the Sabbath, and that this His Lord- ship is an appanage of His Messianic dignity." And
1* This matter is carefully investigated by Sven Herner, Die An- ivendung des Wortes xupco? im N. T., 1903, pp. 7-9, with the result that he assigns i^ z-^ 728 nS 1336,37^ ^ltxA also possibly but not prob- ably 5^^, to Jesus.
15 So Weiss-Meyer : " The conclusion rests ... on the vocation of the Son of Man, as bringing the highest blessing to man, to control
lo The Designations of Our Lord
when He is represented as arguing with the scribes over the significance of the title ' Son of David ' (12^^'^'^), it cannot be doubted that He had Himself as the Messiah in mind; and, whatever else His words suggest, they certainly Intimate that He held Himself as the Messiah to be greater than David as truly as He was greater than Solomon (Mt 12^-) ; that, In a word, David (as that prophetic monarch himself recognized) was no more His father by virtue of His descent from him, than he was His servant by virtue of his essential relation to Him." He was at the very least, and was predicted by David himself as, David's sovereign.
Such being the conception of His lordship which was In His mind, we must assume It was this lofty dignity which He claimed for Himself when He instructed His disciples, whom He sent to bring Him the ass's colt which was to bear Him Into Jerusalem, to tell those who might dispute their right to It, that "the Lord hath need of him" (11^); and this Is borne out by the strongly Messianic character of the whole transaction (verses 9, 10, cf. Mt 21'*'^ Jno j^i^.ir.^ 17 ^^^ surely some such Implications attend
everything that has been arranged for man's blessedness, and there- fore also the Sabbath." Wellhausen perceives that the passage as it stands imports that such authority can be exercised only by the Mes- siah. Cf. Holtzmann.
^^ Cf. Alexander, in loc: "The person thus described, as the supe- rior and sovereign of David and his house and of all Israel, could not possibly be David himself, nor any of his sons and successors except one who by virtue of his twofold nature was at once his sovereign and his son . . .": also Meyer, in loc, whom, however, Weiss seeks to correct (cf. Holtzmann, Hand-Commentar, 249, and A'^. T. The- ologie, I. 243).
i'^ Wellhausen remarks in loc: " 6 xnpcog is purposely meant to sound mysterious; Jesus does not elsewhere so designate Himself, nor
The Designatiojjs in Mark II
also the seml-parabollc designation of Himself as the * Lord of the House ' whose coming is to be watched for (13^^). And at least as much as this is involved when the evangelist identifies Him with ' the Lord ' whose way was to be made ready for Him by the ministry of John the Baptist in fulfillment of the prophetic declarations of Isaiah and Malachi (i^); for the alterations in the language of the declarations introduced by the evangelist make clear his purpose to apply these phrases directly to Jesus. ^^
It is not necessary to presuppose that ' Rabbi ' un- derlies this appellative use of ' Lord ' {xvpcoq). In Mark 12^^ (and probably also i^) the underlying term Is Adhoni, and elsewhere it is doubtless Maran, or ^Marana (or Mara' a) }^ In other words the implica- tions of the term in this application of it are those of supremacy and sovereignty. Whence it emerges that Jesus is represented as claiming for Himself (2^^ 12"^'^'^ j^ss ijS)^ and as being recognized within His own circle as possessing (11^), supreme sovereignty, — a sovereignty superior to that of the typical king himself
is He so named by His disciples or by the narrator." But this is surely hypercritical in the presence of 2-^ and iz^^.st,