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.