Psalm 82

Psalms 82:1-2

The Hebrew word elohim stands twice in this opening verse under two renderings, the mighty and the gods, and the courtroom scene pictures God presiding over a company he holds to account rather than a company of equals. How long will ye judge unjustly, and accept the persons of the wicked names the specific failure, partiality in judgment, favoring the wicked party in a dispute rather than the poor one. Selah pauses on the charge before the case against them is laid out in full.

Psalms 82:3-4

Four commands in two verses spell out what just judgment looks like in practice, defend the poor and fatherless, do justice to the afflicted and needy, deliver the poor and needy, rid them out of the hand of the wicked. The list names exactly the parties ancient law most often failed, those without a patron or a father to plead for them, and the psalm makes their defense the entire content of right judgment. Henry reads this as the standing job description of every judge under God, whoever the gods of verse 1 turn out to be.

Psalms 82:5

The charge escalates from unjust verdicts to a diagnosis, they know not, neither will they understand, walking in darkness they themselves have chosen. All the foundations of the earth are out of course reads the failure of justice as reaching past the local case, as though corrupt judgment shakes the world's own footing and not only the parties before the bench. Barnes reads the line as the poem's own overstatement, proving how seriously the charge is meant rather than describing literal geology.

Psalms 82:6-7

I have said, Ye are gods, and all of you are children of the most High is quoted by the Lord himself at John 10:34, arguing from the lesser to the greater against the charge of blasphemy: if the psalm calls them gods, unto whom the word of God came, the charge against him for calling himself the Son of God does not hold. The verse carries two readings without a verdict between them: Calvin reads elohim here as human judges and magistrates, addressed as gods because they carry God's own delegated authority to judge in his name, while the older council reading, carried into modern scholarship by Michael Heiser, reads a court of spiritual beings set as rulers over the nations and now sentenced for the injustice named above. But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes turns the title into a sentence either way, gods who fail to judge justly will not escape judgment themselves.

Psalms 82:8

Arise, O God, judge the earth: The psalm closes with the prayer its whole argument has been building toward, addressed to the true God after the failed gods have been sentenced, arise, O God, judge the earth, take back the bench that lesser judges have corrupted. For thou shalt inherit all nations turns judgment into possession, not one nation among many but the earth's rightful ruler stepping in where deputies had failed. The single-verse prayer closes the divine council scene by asking heaven's highest court to convene at last.