Psalms 82

1. God standeth in the congregation of God: He judgeth among the gods. 2 How long will ye judge unjustly, And respect the persons of the wicked? [Selah 3 Judge the poor and fatherless: Do justice to the afflicted and destitute. 4 Rescue the poor and needy: Deliver them out of the hand of the wicked.

5. They know not, neither do they understand; They walk to and fro in darkness: All the foundations of the earth are moved. 6 I said, Ye are gods, And all of you sons of the Most High. 7 Nevertheless ye shall die like men, And fall like one of the princes. 8 Arise, O God, judge the earth: For thou shalt inherit all the nations.

THIS PSALM is a solemn rebuke, addressed in prophetic strain, to those who, pledged by their office to uphold the law, had trampled upon it for their own selfish ends. It is a “vision of judgment,” in which no common offenders are arraigned, as it is no earthly tribunal before which they are summoned. God Himself appears, so it seems to the prophet, taking His stand in the midst of that nation whom He had ordained to be the witness of His righteousness, among the rulers and judges of the nation who were destined to reflect, and as it were to embody in visible form, the majesty of that righteousness. He appears now not, as in the fiftieth Psalm, to judge His people, but to judge the judges of that people; not to reprove the congregation at large for their formality and hypocrisy, but to reprove the rulers and magistrates for their open and shameful perversion of justice.

As in the presence of God, the Psalmist takes up his parable against these unjust judges: “How long will ye judge a judgment which is iniquity (such is the exact force of the original), and accept the persons of the ungodly?” These men have scandalously desecrated their office. They had been placed in the loftiest position to which any man could aspire. They were sons of the Highest, called by His name, bearing His image, exercising His authority, charged to execute His will, and they ought to have been, in their measure, His living representatives, the very pattern and likeness of His righteousness and wisdom. But instead of righteousness they had loved unrighteousness. They had shown favor to the wicked who were powerful and wealthy. They had crushed the poor, the defenceless, the fatherless, whose only protection lay in the unsullied uprightness and incorruptibility of the judge, and whom God Himself had made their charge. A witness of these wrongs, the Psalmist appeals to them to discharge their duty faithfully and uprightly: “Do justice to the miserable and fatherless,” etc. (vs. 3, 4). But the appeal is in vain. They have neither feeling nor conscience. Morally and intellectually, intellectually because morally, they are corrupt. The light that is in them is darkness. And thus, venal, unscrupulous, base, hard-hearted, the judges and magistrates have loosened the bonds of law, and the consequence is that the foundations of social order are shaken, and the whole fabric threatened with dissolution. Such is the terrible picture of a disorganized society, the very fountains of justice defiled and poisoned, suggested to us by the words in which the Psalmist here addresses the judges of Israel. He himself had thought, he tells us, that their high dignity and the representative character of their office, placed them so far above other men that they were like beings of a different race; but he warns them that the tyrannous exercise of their power will not last forever, that, as in the case of other rulers of the world, it may only accelerate their fall. And then, finally, he turns to God, and appeals to Him who is the Judge, not of Israel only, but of the world, to arise and execute judgment in the earth, which they who bore His name had perverted. The language of the Psalm is so general that it might belong to any period of the history; and the history itself and the utterance of the prophets show us that the evil here denounced was not the evil of any one age, but of all. P.

Asaph denounces the injustice, corruption, and ignorance of the judges of Israel, and threatens them with destruction. In the first verse he represents the Almighty as sitting in judgment, in the last he calls on Him to judge the earth. The Psalm has bold and remarkable expressions, and the style is pure, compact, and vigorous, but there are no certain indications of date. It may have been written under one of the kings of Judah, either by the elder Asaph at a period of general corruption, as in the reign of Rehoboam; or by a descendant bearing the same name, on the eve of a vigorous reformation, such as that ushered in by Asa, and accomplished by Jehoshaphat (see 2 Chr. 15: 8-19; 19: 4-11). Cook.

This Psalm rebukes corrupt judges, putting in strong light their high responsibility as vicegerents of God and therefore held accountable before Him for the faithful administration of justice. True to the nature of the case, this Psalm assumes that laws and tribunals exist for the benefit of those who need them for the protection of their rights, i.e., for the poor, the helpless, the friendless. Let all judges, and indeed legislators also, know and forget it not, that God’s sympathies are with these dependent classes, and He will surely hold civil officers to their responsibilities toward these needy ones. If they take the place of God, either in making or in administering civil law, let them take care that they use their high powers in sympathy with their Supreme Master and never in defiance of His throne. C.

1. Earthly rulers and judges are not, as they are too ready to think, supreme, independent, irresponsible. There is one higher than the highest. As Jehoshaphat reminds the judges of Israel, God is with them in the judgment. P. — Among the gods. An allusion to a singular usage of the Pentateuch, according to which the theoretical magistrates, as mere representatives of God’s judicial sovereignty, are expressly called Elohim, the plural form of which is peculiarly well suited to this double sense or application. (See Ex. 21: 6; 22: 7, 8, and compare Deut. 1: 17; 10: 17; 2 Chr. 19: 6.) Even reverence to old age seems to be required on this principle (Lev. 19: 32), and obedience to parents in the fifth commandment (Ex. 20: 12), which really applies to all the offices and powers of the patriarchal system, a system founded upon natural relations, and originating in a simple extension of domestic or parental government, in which the human head represents the original and universal parent or progenitor. The remarkable use of the name God in Exodus is concealed from the reader of the English Bible by the arbitrary use of the word judges, as a translation of the Hebrew, which of course it cannot be. He judges, will judge, is about to judge. The idea is, that as the judges were gods to other men, so He would be a judge to them. A.

Gods, not merely as having their authority from God, but as His vicegerents, as embodying in themselves the majesty of the law, as those in whom men look to find the most perfect earthly pattern of Divine attributes, of truth and justice and mercy and impartiality. This name “gods” is applied to the judges of Israel in the Pentateuch. It was in connection with the office of judge that the stamp of divinity was most conspicuous. “The judgment is God’s” (Deut. 1: 17); whoever comes before it comes before God. So, again, Moses uses the phrase, “When ye come to me, to inquire of God” (Ex. 18: 15). P.

It may be said of every magistrate that he sits in God’s seat. God has put upon him a portion of His own dominion and authority; and has ordained that He is to be obeyed, not for wrath’s sake only, but for conscience’ sake. The civil magistrate, in discharging his high function, may justly claim to govern with a Divine right. No one needs to be told that this old doctrine of the Divine right of rulers has been wofully abused. Sycophantic divines have often made of it a flattering unction for the ears of princes; teaching them that they owed no obedience to the laws; that they were responsible to none but God for their administration; that any attempt on the part of the people to curb their tyranny, or to depose them from their seats when milder measures failed, was rebellion against God whose vicegerents they were. Even now, the same doctrine occasionally makes itself heard from the pulpit and the press; and thus men attempt to subject the consciences of the people to the caprice of tyrants. Let it be carefully observed that the harp of Asaph lends no sanction to this “right Divine of kings to govern wrong.” If the prophet testifies that princes are gods, he includes in the honor the humblest magistrate. The elders administering justice in the gate of Bethlehem, though their town be little among the thousands of Judah, sit in God’s seat as truly as King Solomon on his ivory throne in the porch of judgment at Jerusalem. The common saying that “the Divine right of kings is the Divine right of constables,” is a rough way of expressing a Bible truth. Let this be borne in mind, and no one will allege Scripture in defence of royal claims to indefeasible and irresponsible authority, or claim for such authority the sanction of Divine right. But while care ought to be taken to guard the Divine right of civil government from abuse, the right itself is not to be forgotten. The State is an ordinance of God, having, like the family, its foundation in the very constitution of human nature. The officers of the State, whether supreme or subordinate, have a Divine right to administer justice in the community over which Providence has placed them. They who resort to the civil magistrate for judgment, resort to the judgment-seat of God; just as they who resort to the Ministry of the Word resort to the Great Prophet of the Church. Unless the magistrate had received a commission from God, he could not lawfully bear the sword. To take the life of an unarmed fellow-man, without a commission from the Most High warranting the act, would be to commit murder. W. Binnie.

2. This and the rest of the Psalm is addressed by Asaph, in the name of the God of judgment, to the unrighteous judges of Israel. The evils are those denounced by all the prophets. “Accept the persons,” a common expression for undue partiality. Cook.—It is usual to consider what follows, to the end of v. 6, as the words of God as He appears, in vision, pleading with the judges of His people. To me it seems preferable to regard the passage as a rebuke addressed, in the true prophetic strain, by the poet himself, to those whose iniquity called for the protest (somewhat in the same strain as in 58 : 1, 2); v. 6 in particular is thus more forcible, and the address to God in v. 8. P.

The highest philological authorities are now agreed that the primary idea is that of accepting one man’s face or person rather than another’s, the precise form of expression being probably derived from the practice of admitting suitors to confer with governors or rulers face to face, a privilege which can sometimes only be obtained by bribes, especially, though not exclusively, in Oriental courts. A.—They not only accepted the persons of the rich, because they were rich, though that is bad enough, but (which is much worse) they accepted the persons of the wicked, because they were wicked; they not only countenanced them in their wickedness, but loved them the better for it, and fell in with their interests. Woe unto thee, O land, when thy judges are such as these! H.

3,4. The touchstone of magistrates’ justice is in the causes and cases of the poor, fatherless, afflicted, and needy, who are not able to attend long their suits of law, have no friends nor money to deal for them; to whom, therefore, the judges should be eyes to direct them and a staff to their weakness, to support and help them in their right. Dickson.—Persons such as these most of all need the protection of the judge. Their very existence depends on his integrity. The orphan who has lost his natural protectors, the humble who have no powerful friends, the poor who can purchase no countenance, to whom shall they look but to God’s vicegerent? And if he violates his trust, God who is the “God of the widow and the fatherless” (68 : 6), and who in the law declares, “Cursed be he who perverteth the cause of the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow” (Deut. 27 : 19), will not leave him unpunished.

5. It is one strain continued, only that now the infatuation, as before the moral perversion, of the judges is described. The expostulation falls dead without an echo. The men are infatuated by their position, and blinded by their own pride. P.

All the foundations of the earth are out of course. When the dispensers of law have dispensed with justice, settlements are unsettled, society is unhinged, the whole fabric of the nation is shaken. When injustice is committed in due course of law the world is indeed out of course. When “justices’ justice” becomes a by-word, it is time that justice dealt with justices. S.

6. I have said, gods (are) ye, and sons of the Highest all of you. Their sin did not consist in arrogating to themselves too high a dignity, but in abusing it by malversation, and imagining that it relieved them from responsibility, whereas it really enhanced it. They were God’s representatives, but for that very reason they were bound to be pre-eminently just and faithful. A.

Our Lord appeals to this verse in His argument with the Jews when they charged Him with blasphemy, “because He, being a man, made Himself God” (John 10).$^{8}$ How could they charge Him with blasphemy in claiming to be the Son of God, when their own judges had been styled gods! They moreover were unrighteous judges, whereas He was one whom the Father had sanctified, and sent into the world, and whose life and works were a witness to His righteousness. By nature they had no right to the name of Elohim, “gods,” nor had they proved themselves worthy of it by their character. He was in character as in nature Divine. To them the word of God had come, by which they had been appointed to their office. He was Himself the Word of the Father. Their office was but for a time, they were mortal men, yet wearing, by Divine permission, a Divine name. He had been with the Father before He came into the world, was by Him sealed and set apart and sent to be not a judge, but the Christ; not one of many sons, but emphatically the Son of God, the King of an everlasting kingdom. Both in His office and in His person He has far more right to the title “Son of God,” than they have to that of “gods.” P.

The argument is valid, notwithstanding the different sense of the word God in the two applications, because the difference of sense corresponds to a difference of nature and position in the persons to whom the title is applied. Still this observation should be connected with one general reflection upon the religion of the Old Testament. Biblical monotheism has nothing in common with the cold dead deism which Jewish orthodoxy had extracted from the sacred books. The petrified monotheism which forms the connecting link between actual Judaism, Christian rationalism, and Mohammedanism, is but a gross caricature of scriptural thought. Every theocratic function exercised in the name of Jehovah, who conferred it, placed him to whom it was confided in living relation with the Most High, and made him an organ of His influence. Hence such a man—whether king, judge, or prophet—became the precursor of One who, by His incarnation, was to abolish the separation between God and His creature (Zech. 12: 8). The Old Testament, then, is in full advance toward the incarnation. This is at the root of the argument of our Lord. If this advance has nothing blasphemous, the final point to which it consistently tends can have nothing derogatory to the Divine Majesty. Asaph, addressing himself to the Theocratic Judges (v. 1), describes their sublime function as organs of Divine justice. God Himself sits in the midst of them, and from Him their sentences emanate. Vs. 2, 5, Asaph opposes the sad reality to the ideal grandeur of their functions. At v. 6 he returns to the intimation of v. 1, that of official dignity, and the phrase, “I have said, Ye are gods,” refers to Asaph’s own expression in v. 1, for clearly the second term, God (v. 1), includes the person of Judges. Vs. 7 and 8 remind judges that one day they will be judged themselves. Jesus draws from the language of the Psalmist a conclusion a minori ad majus (from the less to the greater). The basis of this reasoning is the principle that Scripture cannot blaspheme. By those “to whom the Word of God came,” Jesus signifies the Judges, to whom the Holy Spirit addresses Himself in the words which He has just cited. The expression, “The Scripture cannot be broken,” shows the boundless confidence which Jesus reposed in Scripture. Godet.

7. Though I have called you “gods” and children of the Most High, yet be not elated; do not dream of being immortal for this earth, or of being above responsibility to the Most High; for ye shall surely die like frail man, made of the ground. And that death will bring you before the dreadful bar of Him whose law you have trampled down; whose heart of love for the poor you have outraged; whose hottest retribution you have brought down on your own guilty heads! C.

Ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes. The meditation of death would pull down the plumes of pride; thou art but dust animated; shall dust and ashes be proud? Thou hast a grassy body, and shall shortly be mowed down: “I have said, ye are gods;” but lest they should grow proud, he adds a corrective: “Ye shall die like men;” ye are dying gods. T. Watson.—He tells them their honor, but withal their lot. In power and place they differ from others; in death they differ not from others. They are cold when winter comes, withered with age, weak with sickness, and melt away with death, as the meanest; all to ashes. T. Adams.—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. S.

8. Arise, O God, judge the earth; for Thou art to possess all nations. This is a petition that, since the representative or delegated judges had proved so unfaithful, God would appear in person and reclaim the powers which had been so wickedly abused. And this He is besought to do, not only in Israel, where the proximate occasion of the prayer was furnished, but throughout the earth, over all whose nations He possessed, and was one day to make good, the same hereditary right, i.e., a right continuing unchanged through all successive generations. A.

Thou shalt inherit the nations. This has respect to the kingdom of providence. God governs the world, sets up and puts down whom He pleases, He inherits all nations, has an absolute dominion over them, to dispose of

them as a man does of his inheritance; this we are to believe and to comfort ourselves with, that the earth is not given so much into the hands of the wicked, the wicked rulers, as we are tempted to think it is (Job 9 : 24). But God has reserved the power to Himself, and overrules them. In this faith we must pray, “Arise, O God, judge the earth, appear against those that judge unjustly, and set shepherds over Thy people after Thine own heart.” There is a righteous God to whom we may have recourse, and on whom we may depend, for the effectual relief of all that find themselves aggrieved by unjust judges. It has respect also to the kingdom of the Messiah. It is a prayer for the hastening of that, that Christ would come, who is to judge the earth, and that promise is pleaded, that God shall give