The Book of Psalms

Word Study

"congregation of the mighty," Hebrew adat-El (עֲדַת־אֵל), the assembly of God. God takes His stand in the very assembly of earth's rulers: "God standeth in the congregation of the mighty." The court that thought itself the highest bench finds Someone standing in the room.

"he judgeth," yishpot (יִשְׁפֹּט). The judges are judged. The men who sit to weigh other men are themselves put on trial, and the psalm never lets them forget which side of the bench they are really on.

"among the gods," bekerev elohim (בְּקֶרֶב אֱלֹהִים), in the midst of the judges/rulers who bear God's authority. "He judgeth among the gods." The lofty title belongs to them only because the authority they wield is borrowed; it is God's own, lent for a time.

"accept the persons," tis'u penei (תִּשְׂאוּ־פְנֵי), show partiality, lift up the face of. The charge against them is favouritism: "How long will ye judge unjustly, and accept the persons of the wicked?" They have been lifting up the faces of the guilty and leaving the innocent unheard.

"defend," shiftu (שִׁפְטוּ), judge for, vindicate. He charges them to stop judging unjustly and to take up the other side: to judge for those who cannot pay for justice, and see them cleared.

"the poor and fatherless," dal veyatom (דַל וְיָתוֹם). "Defend the poor and fatherless: do justice to the afflicted and needy." These are the people with no money, no standing, and no family to press their case, and they are exactly the ones God names first.

Explanation

Two things here reach into every seat of power on earth. First, notice where God stands: "God standeth in the congregation of the mighty; he judgeth among the gods." The "gods" here are not rival deities but human rulers and judges, called by that lofty name because they wield God's own authority to pass judgment, "the judgment is God's" (Deuteronomy 1:17). And the startling picture is that God does not merely watch the courts from heaven; He stands in the midst of them. In every council where verdicts are handed down, an unseen Judge is present, and the judges are themselves on trial. No robe, no bench, no office exempts a ruler from being judged by the One who gave him his authority. Second, notice the standard by which God measures them. It is not the size of the treasury or the strength of the army; it is one thing, how they treat the weakest: "Defend the poor and fatherless: do justice to the afflicted and needy... rid them out of the hand of the wicked." Four times the psalm names the powerless, the poor, the fatherless, the afflicted, the needy. God measures every government by its care for those who cannot defend themselves. Injustice, in Scripture, is not merely doing wrong; it is the strong using their strength against the weak, and the courts, meant to be the refuge of the helpless, becoming the tool of the wicked. God stands in the assembly to demand the opposite.

Gospel Focus

"Defend the poor and fatherless", the God who demands this of earth's judges came Himself as the Judge who does it perfectly. Of the Messiah it was written, "with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth" (Isaiah 11:4). Where earthly judges "accept the persons of the wicked," the Lord Jesus "respecter of persons" is not, for "there is no respect of persons with God" (Romans 2:11). He came preaching good tidings to the poor and defending the despised, and He made care for the helpless the very test of true religion: "Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction" (James 1:27). The heart of God for the poor and fatherless is the heart of Christ, who had compassion on the multitudes and gave Himself for the helpless and the lost. And He calls His people to the same, to be, in a world of unjust courts, those who "defend the poor" and plead for the needy, doing on earth the justice their Judge requires.

Word Study

"they walk on in darkness," Hebrew bachashekhah yithhallakhu (בַּחֲשֵׁכָה יִתְהַלָּכוּ). "They know not, neither will they understand; they walk on in darkness." Their ignorance is not innocent; it is a refusal to understand, and they keep walking in it as though it were day.

"the foundations of the earth," mosdei aretz (מוֹסְדֵי אָרֶץ). Justice is treated as load-bearing. When those charged with it walk in darkness, the damage does not stay in the courtroom; it runs down into the very footings on which the world stands.

"out of course," yimmotu (יִמּוֹטוּ), are shaken, totter. "All the foundations of the earth are out of course." The picture is of a structure knocked off its base and beginning to sway, and corrupt judgment is what set it swaying.

"Ye are gods," Elohim attem (אֱלֹהִים אַתֶּם). God grants the judges their exalted title: "I have said, Ye are gods." He does not strip the office of its dignity; the authority they hold really is God-given, which is precisely why its abuse is so grave.

"children of the most High," benei Elyon (בְּנֵי עֶלְיוֹן). The title is raised even higher: "and all of you are children of the most High." Their rank is genuine, granted by the God who is higher than every one of them.

"die like men," ke'adam temutun (כְּאָדָם תְּמוּתוּן), die like Adam. And in the same breath God pronounces their sentence: "But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes." Whatever titles they carry, they go the way of Adam and return to dust.

Explanation

The heart of this passage is a devastating contrast, an exalted title and a common grave set side by side. God concedes the rulers their dignity: "I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High." It is God who gave them the name; their authority is real, delegated from Him. But the very next line strips away every illusion the title might breed: "But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes." The Hebrew is sharper still, "ye shall die like Adam," you who are called gods will go down into the same dust as the first fallen man. The loftiest title on earth cannot buy one exemption from the grave; the judges who lord it over the poor will lie in the ground with them. This is God's answer to every abuse of power: whatever authority a man holds, he holds it as a dying man, and must give account to the God who does not die. And notice the diagnosis in verse 5, "they walk on in darkness: all the foundations of the earth are out of course." When justice fails at the top, the shock runs all the way down; corrupt judgment does not merely wrong an individual, it shakes the very foundations of the world, for a society is only as stable as its justice is true. Then Jesus took up these very words. To the rulers who charged Him with blasphemy for calling Himself the Son of God, He said, "Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?" (John 10:34), turning Psalm 82 into an argument they could not answer.

Gospel Focus

"I have said, Ye are gods", the Lord Jesus reached back to this verse to defend the truth of who He is. When the Jews took up stones because "thou, being a man, makest thyself God," He answered, "If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken; Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God?" (John 10:35-36). His argument runs from the lesser to the greater: if frail, dying men could be called "gods" merely because God's word came to them, how much more rightly is He called the Son of God, He whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world? For the judges of Psalm 82 only bore the title as God's delegates; but in Jesus, "God was manifest in the flesh" (1 Timothy 3:16), the one true God Himself come among us. He is not a man promoted to the rank of the gods, but the Most High Himself, veiled in our nature. And here is the wonder: though He was truly God, He did the very thing the psalm decreed for those dying judges, He "died like men," laying down His life on the cross, "made in the likeness of men" (Philippians 2:7). But where they die and stay fallen, He rose, conquering the grave that no earthly "god" could escape, and now lives to be the Judge of all.

Word Study

"Arise," Hebrew qumah (קוּמָה), stand up, take action. Having shown that earth's judges are corrupt and dying, the psalm turns from them to the only Judge who will not fail. God has been standing in their assembly; now He is asked to stand up and act.

"judge the earth," shoftah ha'aretz (שָׁפְטָה הָאָרֶץ). "Arise, O God, judge the earth." The failed judges were given a single nation and ruined it; the prayer hands the whole earth over to the one Judge who can be trusted with it.

"thou shalt inherit," tinchal (תִנְחַל), take as thy possession. The ground of the prayer is God's own right: "for thou shalt inherit all nations." He is asked to judge what already belongs to Him, and what He will yet take fully into His hand.

"all nations," bekhol-haggoyim (בְּכָל־הַגּוֹיִם), among all the nations. The reach of the claim is total. Not Israel only but every people on earth falls within the inheritance of the God who judges justly.

Explanation

This single closing verse is the turn of the whole psalm, and it repays a careful look. Everything before it has exposed the failure of human justice, judges who accept the persons of the wicked, who walk in darkness, who will die like Adam. The question the psalm has been driving toward is: if even the "gods" fail, where can the poor and fatherless finally look? The answer is not a better human judge, not reform, not revolution, but the coming of God Himself: "Arise, O God, judge the earth." The word "arise" pictures the Judge who has, as it were, been seated and silent, now standing up to act. When every earthly court has failed the helpless, the final appeal is to the One of whom Abraham asked, "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" (Genesis 18:25). And notice the ground given for the plea: "for thou shalt inherit all nations." The reason God has the right to judge the whole earth is that the whole earth is His by inheritance; the nations are not the property of their corrupt rulers but the possession of God. The psalm that began by watching God stand within one corrupt assembly ends by lifting our eyes to God's claim over all nations. Local injustice drives the heart to cry for the universal reign of God, the only lasting remedy for a world where the courts have failed.

Gospel Focus

"Arise, O God, judge the earth: for thou shalt inherit all nations", this prayer is answered in the Lord Jesus Christ, God manifest in flesh, to whom the Father has given both the judgment and the nations. The judgment: "the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son" (John 5:22), and God "hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead" (Acts 17:31). The nations: to the Son the Father says, "Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession" (Psalm 2:8), and the day comes when "the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever" (Revelation 11:15). So the cry of Psalm 82 is not left hanging. God has arisen, He came in Christ, died and rose, and will yet come to judge the earth in perfect righteousness and to reign over all nations. For the poor and fatherless failed by every earthly court, this is the final comfort: the Judge of all the earth is the Lord Jesus, and He will do right.