Psalms 45:6
Psalms 45:66Your throne, O God, endures forever and ever, and justice is the scepter of Your kingdom.
Jehovah's Witnesses generally accept that Psalm 45 is a royal wedding psalm with messianic overtones but resist the conclusion that the king addressed as "God" (Elohim) in verse 6 is truly divine. They argue the title is honorific, applied to one who rules on behalf of Jehovah rather than one who shares Jehovah's nature. The critical battleground is the New Testament quotation in , where the NWT renders the verse "God is your throne" — making God the source of the Son's authority rather than a vocative address to the Son as God. By reframing the syntax, the Watchtower avoids the implication that the Father directly calls the Son "God." This allows them to treat the psalm as evidence that Jesus holds a delegated throne, not an inherent deity.
Protestants read as a direct address to the messianic king: "Your throne, O God, is forever and ever." The significance multiplies when the author of Hebrews quotes this verse in and attributes it to the Father speaking about the Son. The context of Hebrews 1 is a sustained argument that the Son is superior to angels, and the quotation chain includes multiple YHWH texts applied to Christ ( in , LXX in ). Within that chain, the Father addressing the Son as "God" is not an isolated proof-text but part of a deliberate pattern identifying Jesus with YHWH. The Greek ho thronos sou ho theos uses the nominative as a vocative — a direct address — which is the reading of virtually every major English translation and Greek commentary. The psalm itself, combined with its New Testament application, provides one of the clearest instances of the Father's own testimony that the Son is God.