Ps. 82.3-4 (justice and the orphan)

Judge / the powerless and the orphan
maintain the rights / of the poverty-stricken
make the powerless poor secure
save them / from the hand of the wicked. 

The gods of justice. These lines are something of a perplexity. The immediately preceding lines were an address (a question; a condemnation) to the gods. It would seem at first glance that this continues his address. However, in the context of the entire psalm I don’t think that is likely. The gods are later condemned to mortality. It would seem strange, then, for God, here, to be providing the gods the ‘standards of justice.’ Rather, what I think we see here, is the primal command God gave the gods when he apportioned them over the nations. They are, in this way, creation establishing commands. What I mean is this: it is clear from the psalm that justice is what actually undergirds creation. Creation is itself a type of revelation of justice and ordering (as Genesis makes clear). The psalm later says the failure of justice makes the ‘foundations of the earth’ shake (it borders on the chaos from which it came forth). That is the first point. The second is that these gods, I believe, represent the gods that God assigned as leaders, protectors and judges over the nations. God, Yhwh, took Israel for himself. The other gods were assigned to other nations. When we bring both of these insights together we see in these lines the primal mission of the gods as they are set over the nations, ordering the world according to God’s design. 

The content of justice. As deeply moving as the previous insight is, what we come to see as to the content of his world-establishing justice is profound. Rather than being a justice that resides in the pinnacle of power, it is one that is most active in so far as it reaches down to the weakest. The focus here is not so much on ‘correct’ judgment but on protection, on enacting a type of solidarity with the poor and those who have no other kinsman (the orphan). The gods are, in other words, supposed to ‘fill in the gaps’ of justice, the gaps through which people fall and are forgotten and at the mercy of the wicked. What is clear, though, is that they have failed. The powerless have found no comforter, no kinsman for their defense. As such, the creation-foundations of the nations have been called into question.