Ps. 83.3 (against your people)

Against your people / they make plans
and they conspire together / against your treasured one. 

You to your. In the immediately preceding verse, where the enemies first ‘raised their head(s)’, their ‘roaring’ and movement was instigated by their hatred for God: “your enemies”; “those who hate you have raised their heads”. Here, that ‘you’ turns into ‘yours’. While their hatred for God may have been what awoke them, the object of their attack is “your people” and “your treasured ones”. Their hatred for God becomes incarnate in their attempt to destroy his people. In this we see something important: that the (covenantal) bond between God and Israel is the, in a sense, not just the umbilical cord for Israel but also that which represents the ‘throne of God’. For the enemies, if they can destroy Israel, they sever God’s power. Israel is the ‘heart’ of God, that which he most cherishes. She is his ‘treasured ones’. 

Rhetoric. All of this said, we must now consider how this verse operates. It is easy to forget that these psalms were not written to us as readers, but for us to be spoken to God. As such, these words’ intended audience is God. The question then is, why would the psalmist speak these words in particular to God? The answer I believe is that they are part of the petition that opened the psalm. The psalmist is attempting to get God to “speak, not be silent or still” by bringing to his attention, 1) the ‘rising’ of the enemy (vs. 2) and 2) the fact that the object of the enemies’ hatred are God’s treasured ones. It is an appeal to God’s heart and devotion.

Ps. 83.1 (the gathering storm)

O God / do not rest
do not be silent / or still / O God. 

It is perhaps significant that the psalm opens in the negative. Rather than petitioning God to act, speak or move, the psalmist implores God to “not rest”, “not be silent” and “not be still”. One feels in this opening verse not the sense that God is currently at bay, but that the action the psalmist is calling for is one of a more profound nature than what has perhaps existed in the past. In other words, because of the nature of the threat that will be unveiled later in the psalm, this call to “not..” originates not from a sense of God’s absence but from a sense that a particular, and profound, action is necessary. It is with that in mind that we should hear the repetition. The psalmist does not merely ask God “not to rest” but emphasizes the point three times in three different ways (resting, speaking and movement). (It is interesting to note that God’s act of ‘speaking’ is portrayed here as a form of his movement. What God speaks is not referential (it is not referring to a reality) but sacramental (it is the reality it speaks; as in Genesis where for God to speak is for him to create; here, for God to speak is for him to judge/redeem).) In the repetition there is the sense of a ‘gathering storm’ of action, of an ever-increasing tidal wave of movement against the enemy. As we will see, this ‘gathering storm’ is thematic as the threat itself is a ‘gathering into one’ of many nations. Just as the nations will unite to destroy Israel, so is the psalmist imploring God to ‘unite’ all his energies against them. It is along these lines that we should see this verse in relationship to verses 13-15, where we find the ‘positive’ side of this petition. There, the psalmist implores God not simply into ‘action’ but into a profound and utterly massive display of destruction.

Ps. 83.2 (spying the enemy)

For lo / your enemies / are roaring
and those who hate you / have raised their heads. 

One aspect to this psalm that has been noted by others it he fact that it employs a large amount of standard (‘generic’) language. This verse is one example in that the ‘roaring’ of enemies and the ‘raising of the head’ is seen in many psalms representing the ascendency of the enemies. As valid as that point may be it misses something important and may in fact come close to obscuring the import of the language in this psalm. The point is this: the immediately preceding verse implored God not to ‘remain silent’ and to neither rest or be still. This verse immediately refers to the wicked “roaring” and “raising their heads”; they ‘are not silent’ nor are they ‘resting’ or ‘being still’.  In light of the previous reflection, this juxtaposition takes on an added depth. There, we saw how, by framing the petition in the negative the psalmist was not asking that God ‘speak’ because he is now silent but, rather, to speak and move in order to address the unique danger that is confronting him and his people. In this verse, it begins with “For lo…” as if calling God’s attention to a rising foe in the distance, one that represents a new and more terrible threat than what is generally arrayed against him and his people. Within this context, the ‘roaring’ and ‘head raising’ of the enemy is anything but generic—it represents something profound, something that is uniquely formidable. This ‘roaring’ is not like the generic ‘roaring’ of the wicked. Just as the ‘action’ that God is called to will later be seen to be a thunderous and awe-inspiring form of judgment so too is the type of ‘roaring’ and ‘head-raising’ here something of a uniquely powerful sort—we will see later that this ‘head-raising’ is actually a multi-headed-but-unified threat. Imagistically, it calls to mind the ‘beasts’ of apocalyptic literature where a single beast contains either numerous heads or horns or both, the point being that in its unity it is massively powerful.

Ps. 82.8 (the kingdom of God)

Arise / O God / judge the earth
for you have patrimony / in every nation. 

The preceding line contained within it an ambiguous conclusion. On the one hand, the dethroning of the gods was in the order of justice. Their failure to mediate God’s justice had led to the exploitation of the weak and forgotten and, consequently, destabilized the very foundations of creation. Their judgment was, in this sense, an act of mercy. On the other hand, though, the gods had been assigned as overlords of the nations. They were assigned their roles by God and, as such, their missions were a good. For them to be removed, therefore, represents a tragic failure. The line’s conclusion was the conclusion of God’s speech and we are left to wonder what will come to fill in the void created by the dethroned gods. Will the entire nation now sink into the hands of the strongest? In other words, with the gods gone, now what will happen? It is that with that lingering question that the final verse attempts to answer in the voice of the psalmist. 

Judge the earth. In order to grasp at least one of the layers of meaning in this concluding verse we need to compare it to the opening. There, God stood in the divine assembly and delivered the accusation that eventually led to the gods’ sentence of death. The sentence of death, importantly, was not in regard to how the divine realm was operating ‘in itself’ but how it was operating in regard to its mission to establish justice on earth. The failure of justice on the part of the gods led to their being cast down into the death of mortals. Because they failed man, they would die like man. Here, in this final verse, when God is called upon to step forward into the vacuum created by the gods’ dethroning, the object of justice is now, not the ‘divine assembly’, but “the earth”. As is clear from the above, that has been the focus throughout, but now, with the gods’ removal, that intermediate zone of mediated justice is removed and God fulfills the role directly, not just for Israel but the whole earth. 

Voice of God, voice of psalmist. Structurally, the psalm begins with the psalmist’s description of the heavenly assembly. It then moves into the direct words of God as he pronounces judgment. God’s words conclude with the gods’ being consigned to mortality. The final verse resumes the perspective of the opening but now not as description but as petition. It is crucial to see why this is so—with God executing judgment over the gods, the earth has been ‘cleansed’ of its negligent overlords. Within the space of that cleansing, the space of petition is opened. Now, man can petition God to step into the void and appropriate for himself the role that all of the gods previously held. This is important for two reasons. First, the divine realm is not one that man is privy to; he must be taken to it in a vision. As such, he has no authority or control over it. Man’s realm is earth. That said, the divine realm directly affects earth, as we see in this psalm; the gods were to mediate justice to earth. What this shows us is that if the divine realm itself needs to be cleansed by and through an act of judgment, it must be something that man can, in a sense, only witness. He can’t be a participant. Second, what this psalm reveals is that God, in the divine realm, will take the initiative on his own. He will bring forth the necessary ‘complaint’: “how long will you judge unjustly?” (that which usually originates from man in other psalms now comes forth from God). The complaint as the ‘initiator of justice’ comes ‘from above’ as much as ‘from below’. 

Justice and the divine. We must see, however, that with the gods judgment man is not somehow freed from divine justice; he is simply freed from the negligent gods, the ‘sons of Elyon’. The psalm is not questioning the fact that man’s enactment of justice on earth flows from the obedience of (and to) the divine realm. It is precisely this reason why the psalm does not conclude in (a type of secular) thanksgiving (thanking God for dethroning the gods) but in (a religious) petition, asking God to step into the vacuum.  In other words, with heaven now in order man is able to fulfill his role as enacting justice on earth. 

Patrimony. The final line is intriguing on many levels. It clearly points to the fact that God apportioned gods over the other nations, but that those nations remained ‘his’; the gods were merely his agents who were to enact his justice and concern. He was not giving the nations to the gods. God, Yhwh, kept Israel for himself alone. However, with the failure of the gods, that world-wide perspective now emerges into view once again. The psalmist, importantly, is not attempting to retain Yhwh for Israel but is asking that the entire world now become established under Yhwh’s direct authority. It was the failure of justice on a world-wide level that led to the gods’ judgment; it is also what will lead to the world’s reunion under Yhwh. 

Mysteriously, the psalm seems to be pointing toward a time when the divine realm will be cleansed, the gods consigned to mortality, and the entire world brought under Yhwh’s authority. It is, therefore, in a mysterious fashion pointing toward the cross, crucifixion and ascension of Christ—it is pointing toward the Church, the kingdom of God, when the nations will be brought under the authority of God.

Ps. 82.7 (the gods' fall)

Indeed / I said,
“You are gods
and sons of Elyon / are you all.
But no! / You will die / like humankind
and fall / like any chieftain. 

If this psalm can be envisioned as a type of court-case, with God the Judge standing to read the ‘complaint’ in the opening, the commission in the second portion, the ‘evidence’ in the third of their failure, then we now move into the sentencing. In order to understand the opening salvo, however, we need to understand the judgment itself. What the gods are now to suffer is death. They are to ‘fall’ from the state immortality and “die like humankind”. It is with that in mind that we should hear the opening words of their being “gods, sons of Elyon”. To be a ‘son of Elyon’ is to be immortal, or deathless. That is the reason the verdict begins in the way it does. Further, and by implication, to be immortal is to also be co-extensive with having a ‘seat of power’. What I mean is that when the gods are robbed of their immortality it is not the case that that is all. Rather, it coincides with their loss of power, of their being ‘cast down’ from their thrones, “falling like any chieftain”. 

Preservation. In the context of the psalm, the gods are consigned to death not as an act of punishment but as an act of preservation. The gods failure had been leading to a growing instability within creation itself; it threatened to upturn the ‘foundations of the earth’ and return it to the watery chaos from which it had emerged. This ‘limiting’ of the gods, then, is an act of compassion toward creation; it prevents the gods from their ongoing act of injustice and as being further agents of chaos. In this way, there is an important reference in this portion of the psalm to the ‘death of Adam’. When it says “you will die like humankind” it could be read as saying “you will die like Adam.” Adam, too, had been a ‘son of God’ (made in his image) and one who would, if obedient, live forever. His failure though led to his death, but, a death that was, ultimately, an act of limiting mercy. It prevented him from growing into a monster. (Just as with the tower of Babel and the dispersal of languages.) The point to much of this is that faithfulness in some manner participates the gods (and Adam) in God’s ‘forever’. (It is profoundly important to note, in this regard, that later Jewish interpreters of this psalm believed that it referred to Israel receiving the Torah at Sinai. It was there that they, for a moment, become the immortal ‘sons of God’ only to lose it immeidatly upon their worshipping the ‘golden calf’ (their ‘fall’)). And within that realm they become the gods of nations, persistent, forever-sons-of-elyon. Their failure, however, leads to their death, yes, but more fundamentally to their removal, their deposing. In order for creation to be restored the gods needed to be cast down. 

Finality. A concluding point to make is that the finality of death leads one to conclude that this psalm is speaking not about a mythical dethronement but a point when the gods of the nations would be deposed and Yhwh would extend his personal rule of Israel to the entire earth. It is then, when the gods fall, that he would be the king over all the nations. This is a fascinating insight into what happened when Christ died on the cross and rose, for it was then that the gods began losing their grip over the nations (prophets fell silent), when the gentiles began to be included within the family of Israel…