Dialogue with Trypho

Your teachers have ventured to refer the passage, 'The Lord says to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, until I make Your enemies Your footstool,' to Hezekiah, as if he were asked to sit on the right side of the temple when the king of Assyria sent to him and threatened him, and he was told by Isaiah not to be afraid. Now we know and acknowledge that what Isaiah said happened; that the king of Assyria ceased waging war against Jerusalem in Hezekiah's days, and the angel of the Lord killed about 185,000 of the Assyrian army.

But it is clear that the Psalm does not refer to him. For it is written, 'The Lord says to my Lord, Sit at My right hand, until I make Your enemies Your footstool. He shall send forth a rod of power over Jerusalem, and it shall rule in the midst of Your enemies. In the splendor of the saints before the morning star have I begotten You. The Lord has sworn and will not change His mind, You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.' Who does not admit, then, that Hezekiah is not a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek? And who does not know that he is not the redeemer of Jerusalem? And who does not know that he neither sent a rod of power into Jerusalem nor ruled in the midst of his enemies, but that it was God who turned away the enemies from him after he mourned and was afflicted? But our Jesus, who has not yet come in glory, has sent into Jerusalem a rod of power, namely, the word of calling and repentance meant for all nations over which demons held sway, as David says, 'The gods of the nations are demons.' And His strong word has led many to abandon the demons whom they used to serve, and by means of it to believe in the Almighty God because the gods of the nations are demons.

And we mentioned before that the statement, 'In the splendor of the saints before the morning star have I begotten You from the womb,' is made to Christ.