What does the right hand represent in the Bible?

The "right hand" speaks of authority, power, and eminence. According to Exodus 15:6, delivering and subduing power belong to the right hand. In Genesis 48:14 the right hand is the dispenser of sovereign and irrevocable blessing. In the Psalm, David's Lord is invited by Jehovah to sit on His right hand. This is a fundamental truth, used by our Lord in the synoptic gospels as attesting the greatness of His Person. His exaltation thus is hailed in Acts 2:32-36, as indicating God's approval of Him and at the same time reversing man's judgment.

What a blessed place of rest and peace drawn so close to Him in His tender embrace. "His left hand is under my head." The heart is on the left side. The left hand is the hand nearest His heart. She pillows her weary head in His left hand, soothed by the tender affectionate touch of that hand that was pierced for her. Again we say, What a blessed place of rest. And then, "His right hand doth embrace me." The right hand is the hand we do things with. It is the symbol of power. "Thy right hand, O Lord, is become glorious in power: Thy right hand, O Lord, has dashed in pieces the enemy" (Ex. 15:6). "My soul follows hard after Thee: Thy right hand upholds me" (Ps. 63:8). His mighty right arm is thrown around her to sustain her and draw her closer to Himself, but also what a protection, with His powerful arm around her, no enemy can molest her, no harm can reach her.

Now just look for a moment at the method of the cure, the kind of way in which the cure is effected. First of all, He says to the man, "Stand forth." That is a very important word, "stand forth," because the great thing is to have the object of helplessness and need plainly apparent before every eye. I have no doubt that was the Saviour's object in bringing this man forward, so that every eye should rest upon the helplessness. That poor, helpless, impoverished man had lost the use of that which so peculiarly belongs to man, and is so characteristically his power, that the right hand becomes the emblem of and is constantly used in scripture for, power and ability, and favour too. The very place that He is occupying to-night "at the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens," "being by the right hand of God exalted," speaks to us of the favour and power and might that has taken the Saviour from this world, and set Him there before His God: and this man with the right hand withered was to be seen by every one as an object who was in his own condition and circumstances perfectly powerless, so that every eye should form its own conceptions of the dire need that was there before Christ. "Stand forth." And he stands forth, and then He puts this question that I have already spoken of, this searching question that goes down to the very depths of conscience. Because there is conscience there; that conscience which man acquired as a fallen being; it was conscience under the searching word and power of Christ that compelled those men to be silent. What could they say? Their own consciences, in the presence of that word, were obliged to bear witness to the truth that He pressed. There is a silence of conscience that is far more expressive than the most loud-sounding voice, the silence of a conscience that is arrested by the word of God, arrested by the word of Christ, laid hold of by that power that searches men through and through. Oh! dear friends, there is something in this silence — shall I call it the sullen silence — of a conscience that cannot stand the piercing power of the Saviour's words. They hold their peace; and then in this silence, when conscience is obliged to give that tacit witness to the truth (and He was "the truth" there before them), He says to the man (and I call your special attention to this for a moment), "Stretch forth thine hand." Do you observe that there was no touch, no burden to be laid down there by the man, there was no claim upon him, so to speak, to alter anything; the Lord did not anoint this mans hand as He anointed the blind man's eyes in John 9 with the clay which His own spittle had moistened, and sent him to wash in the pool of Siloam: that scene has its own beauty and its own moral characteristics in its place in John; here we read of no work, no touch, no burden laid down, no clay applied, no remedy used. What is it? "He spake and it was done." There is nothing that so beautifully and wonderfully brings out the power of the great Servant like that word, "Stretch forth thine hand." The whole power is in that word, "Stretch forth thine hand." What I press upon my beloved brethren to-night is, it was a word of power; there was power in that "Stretch forth" that relaxed the muscles and freed that limb from its atrophy; that "Stretch forth" was exactly the very opposite to his condition; it was the very thing the man could not do of himself; his powerlessness to stretch forth his hand marked exactly the phase and condition he was in; and therefore, as I said before, the Lord's words were words of power, and those words — not works — of power, accomplished the whole thing. It would be simply impossible for that man not to stretch forth his hand; that is the point wherein the truth lies. And I look upon all the speculations that sometimes have been crowded around cases of this kind in scripture as mere idle, shallow perversions of the truth. Sometimes, you know, they say that the man stretched forth his hand and joined his faith with the word of Christ. I believe the simple word accomplished everything. I should like to know what there was that joined its faith with this word, "Let light be; and light was." It is the simple fiat of the great Creator, that is what it was; it is the simple word of the One who can speak and the thing is done. You know it is exactly the opposite with men; it matters not how great a man may be, or how small a man may be (though I suppose very few men are small in their own estimation), but you will always find that what characterises man as such is a great ado, a certain amount of noise and trumpet-blowing; attention must be called to his actings. I was struck the other day in reading the account of the cure of Naaman the Syrian, how clearly that comes out. The word of God, through the prophet Elisha, to him was, Go, wash seven times in Jordan, and your flesh shall come again as the flesh of a little child, and you shall be clean.

Exodus 15:6, lifted in a sense out of its setting, gives some idea of what is connected with the thought of the right hand. "Thy right hand … is become glorious in power"; glorious power is connected with the right hand of God. The hand that has become glorious in power will establish the will of God and put down, as it did then historically in regard to Pharaoh and his host, every opposing element. When the will of God is established and every evil suppressed, the righteous government of God will be established in the Son of the right hand.

Psalm 80:17, "Let thy hand be on the man of thy right hand". God's hand is laid upon him. Psalm 89:19 says, "I have laid help upon one that is mighty". The Mighty one of Psalm 89 is the Man of the right hand in Psalm 80. God has a Man upon whom He can lay His hand, and if He lays His hand upon Him, it means that He is committing everything for His own glory to Him. There is no doubt who that Man is. "The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his hand" (John 3:35). There is One before Him upon whom He can lay His hand, and in doing so bestows upon Him everything to God's glory. His hand is upon the Man of His right hand, upon the Son of Man whom He made strong for Himself.

Psalm 110 starts without preliminaries, "the LORD said unto my Lord, sit thou at my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool". The name LORD in capitals in the A.V. signifies God's personal name, Jehovah, and "my Lord" has the meaning, my Master. There are thus two Persons. The God of Israel addressed the Messianic King "Sit thou at my right hand".

Here it is the right hand of the Majesty, or greatness, on high, for the Spirit of God is emphasising the greatness of the Person of the Son. Power and authority are connected with the right hand, but greatness is added because of who Jesus is, and because of the greatness of the work accomplished.

Not only is Christ risen, however, but He is gone into heaven and is already at the right hand of God, which signifies that He is the appointed Administrator of all God's will. A man of large business interests who has someone of great ability acting for him and carrying out his wishes, will often speak of him as "my right-hand man." The Lord Jesus is indeed the "Man of Thy right hand" of whom the Psalmist spoke (Ps. 80:17), and we have been baptized to Him and come under His authority. To Him all angels and authorities and powers are subject.

After the statement that "the Lord is thy keeper," it is said "the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand." "Shade" may be understood, from what follows, as protection, even as we read in Isaiah, "Thou hast been … a shadow from the heat, when the blast of the terrible ones is as a storm against the wall." The force of "at thy right hand" may, perhaps, be gathered from another Psalm, where we read, "Because He (Jehovah) is at my right hand I shall not be moved." (Psalm 16:8.) The expression would thus seem to signify that the Lord's protection is ever available, always, to use a common phrase, "at hand" for His people. This protection is manifestly spoken of in reference to what follows:

The right hand too speaks of power. His tongue was like "a sharp two-edged sword :" that is, His verdicts had all the discerning and cutting power of the veritable word of God. Finally, His whole countenance was clothed with sun-like glory, too bright for mortal eyes. No wonder, that in the presence of such an One — the Son of Man, arising to judgment, invested with the insignia and glory of Deity — John fell at His feet as dead.

Rev. 1:16. — “Having in His right hand seven stars.” The stars are declared to be the angels or representatives of the churches (v. 20). The “stars” as a symbol are the expression, first, of countless multitudes (Gen. 15:5); second, eminent persons in authority, civil and ecclesiastical (Dan. 8:10; Rev. 6:13; 12:4); third, lesser or subordinate powers in general (Gen. 37:9; Rev. 12:1). All Church authority, all ministry, and all spiritual rule in every assembly are vested in Christ. His competency to give or withhold, to preserve and sustain every true minister of God is the fundamental idea in the stars being held in His right hand. When the eternal security of believers is in question they are said to be in His hand, and in the Father’s hand, from whence no power can pluck them (John 10:28-29). But they are not said to be in His “right hand,” as here. Spiritual rulers — we do not say official ones, for all such have not been set in the Church of God — are held and maintained in the right hand of the Son of Man. “The right hand” betokens supreme authority and honour (Ps. 110: l; Eph. 1:20; Rev. 5:1, 7). What a responsible, yet withal honourable position every ruler in the Church occupies! Daniel 12:3 points to a future class of Jewish ministers or rulers. Jude 13 refers to a class of Christian apostates.

In the cleansing of the leper, and in the consecration of the priest alike, the blood is put upon three parts of man, which together manifest what he is, — the tip of the right ear, the thumb of the right hand, and the great toe of the right foot. By the ear he is to receive the word of God; with the hand, to do the enjoined work; with the foot, to walk in His blessed ways. This is evidently the man in his whole responsibility.