Psalms 82:7
But like mortals you will die, and like rulers you will fall.”
BSB
ASV
Nevertheless ye shall die like men, And fall like one of the princes.
KJV
But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes.
But you shall die like men. You see, then, that he who is a man dies. For God does not die. And Adam, as long as he kept the commandment and was a god, did not die. But after he tasted of the forbidden tree, immediately he died. Finally God says to him: 'On whatever day you taste, you shall die the death.' It has it better in the Hebrew: 'But you shall die like Adam.' Just as he was cast out of paradise, so we too have been cast out. And you shall fall like one of the princes.
But ye shall die like men. What sarcasm it seems! Great as the office made the men, they were still but men, and must die. To every judge this verse is a memento mori! He must leave the bench to stand at the bar, and on the way must put off the ermine to put on the shroud. And fall like one of the princes. Who were usually the first to die: for battle, sedition, and luxury, made greater havoc among the great than among any others.
Rare words are the text's own signal of a deliberate thread: the fewer the occurrences, the more the places it appears belong together.
The walk8
Follow this verse’s cross-references two steps out. Each card is a verse this one points to, and beneath it the verses that one points to in turn. Where several different paths arrive at the same place, that place is listed first: the text keeps returning to it. Every stop shows its own words, and every stop is a page.
Through
Psalms 83:11Make their nobles like Oreb and Zeeb, and all their princes like Zebah and Zalmunna,
leads to
They also captured Oreb and Zeeb, the two princes of Midian; and they killed Oreb at the rock of Oreb and Zeeb at the winepress of Zeeb. So they pursued the Midianites and brought…
Through
Psalms 49:12But a man, despite his wealth, cannot endure; he is like the beasts that perish.
leads to
I said to myself, “As for the sons of men, God tests them so that they may see for themselves that they are but beasts.”
A man who has riches without understanding is like the beasts that perish.
You, indeed, have made my days as handbreadths, and my lifetime as nothing before You. Truly each man at his best exists as but a breath. Selah
For surely no man knows his time: Like fish caught in a cruel net or birds trapped in a snare, so men are ensnared in an evil time that suddenly falls upon them.
But the one who is rich should exult in his low position, because he will pass away like a flower of the field.
Through
Job 21:32He is carried to the grave, and watch is kept over his tomb.
leads to
One day the beggar died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s side. And the rich man also died and was buried.
Through
Ezekiel 31:14This happened so that no other trees by the waters would become great in height and set their tops among the clouds, and no other well-watered trees would reach them in height. For they…
leads to
Did not your forefathers do the same things, so that our God brought all this disaster on us and on this city? And now you are rekindling His wrath against Israel by profaning the…