Thoughts on Psalm 82

Today’s reading: Psalms 81-83; Luke 7

I feel like we’ve already talked about Psalm 82 quite a bit on this blog, but this is the first time we are actually coming to it in the reading plan, so I figured it was worth taking the time to look at it again.

God has taken his place in the divine council;
in the midst of the gods he holds judgment:
“How long will you judge unjustly
and show partiality to the wicked?
Give justice to the weak and the fatherless;
maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute.
Rescue the weak and the needy;
deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”

They have neither knowledge nor understanding,
they walk about in darkness;
all the foundations of the earth are shaken.

I said, “You are gods,
sons of the Most High, all of you;
nevertheless, like men you shall die,
and fall like any prince.”

Arise, O God, judge the earth;
for you shall inherit all the nations!

The tendency today, at least in the West, is to assume the gods of the nations are fake. When we read about Baal, Dagon, Milcom, Asherah, etc. in the Bible, we regard them as powerless statues and myths with no real power behind them, but that is not the perspective of the Bible. The Biblical perspective is that those national gods were very real spiritual beings, and more than that, were assigned their positions over the nations by Yahweh Himself.

Deuteronomy 32 talks about when the Lord divided the nations, allotting them to the sons of God, but then claimed Israel as His own inheritance. This is looking back to the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11, where God confused men’s languages and scattered them. Prior to Babel all of humanity belonged to God, but at Babel, He gave them over to lesser elohim (lesser spiritual beings), who we are told in Psalm 82 were members of His divine council. The nations were allotted to the gods, and out of the midst of those scattered nations, God chose Abram to form a new people for Himself.

But Psalm 82 tells us that something went wrong. Rather than ruling the nations in line with God’s will, the gods rebelled and led their nations in corruption and injustice. Because of this, because of their faithless rebellion, God says He will judge those gods and they will lose their charge, with their nations reverting back to God’s control and inheritance.

This is already happening in Christ, where God is calling people out of the nations to become part of His people by faith. But there will also come a day when these gods themselves, along with their people, will be judged, and the earth will be fully restored to the rule of Yahweh forever.

To the biblical authors and their original readers, the gods of the nations were not mere powerless statues, but were powerful spiritual entities vying for their allegiance, seeking to turn their hearts away from believing loyalty to Yahweh.