Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Psalm 82: A psalm of Asaph.   

While this is the shortest of the psalms, it is by no means the easiest to interpret. Is this a meeting God convenes to lecture his bad angels? I don’t think so. The evidence points us in another direction. In verse 6, God says: 

“I said, ‘You are “gods”; you are all sons of the Most High.”

To get at this we have to go back to the Hebrew. “Gods” in this passage translates as Elohim, meaning judges or those with power. So the psalm starts with God standing and judging. Like Hebrew judges he may sit to listen to cases, but he stands to make a judgement and this time he is judging those who are placed in the position of power or judgement over others in Israel. I believe he is judging the judges whose position makes them like gods. This psalm clearly indicates that their power does not come from the king or ruler but from God. They are expected to act like God when they sit in place of God in any judgement seat, not simply pass judgements convenient for the leaders of the nation. So by the time we get to verse 2, their job is given honour, but their behaviour in that job is condemned.

These judges favour the unjust and the wicked. If you add the rich and the influential, God could be speaking directly to judges and leaders in our own time. God demands that they:

“Defend the weak and the fatherless; uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed.

Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked”(3-4)

  God says that because such judges refuse to dispense the justice of God, they know nothing, they understand nothing and 

“They walk about in darkness; all the foundations of the earth are shaken.” (v5)

Here is an interesting idea. If the foundations of the earth are shaken by the blind biases of earthly judges, that fact implies all things in Creation may well be connected to the judgement leaders impose, including the health of the environment and the survival of plant and animal species in the world.

Finally, God reminds the judges that while they do the work of God as sons of the Most High, they in fact are still human and will die like mere mortals. God reminds them that they will fall like every other ruler. In this way, God brings the judges of the earth up short and reminds them who it is gives them their power and their authority. And whose compassionate judgement they are to emulate. So these bad judges are told to mend their ways not just for the sake of the poor and oppressed, but for the sake of all the foundations of the earth!

The psalm ends with the singer begging God to rise up and judge the earth, stating that all the nations are God’s inheritance. The psalm itself seems to me to be the psalmist’s imagined gathering, where God brings all the judges of Israel or perhaps of the whole world together and lectures them on what they should be doing instead of the corrupt practices into which they have allowed themselves to fall. 

Certainly, some earthly judges and leaders will never stop being corrupted. I wonder if the singer of the psalm recognized this fact when he begged God to step in. This call for God to step in and bring justice is seen in many psalms. Old Testament people frequently looked to God to step in and fix the problems of the world. Such a request is built into many of our prayers and hymns to this day. 

An interesting footnote to this psalm is that Jesus referenced Psalm 82, when debating with the Pharisees. (John 10:34-38) We now know that Jesus was the answer to that long chain of prayer begging God to step in. The surprise came when Jesus taught us that in our weakness, we could fix our own problems in his name and in the power of the Spirit. 

Psalm 82 remains a dynamic call for justice in a corrupt world and a warning to those in power to use their office to care for the helpless and needy. Are any of our leaders, judges and those we consider to be ‘gods’ listening?

- Peter Mansell, September 16, 2014