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Wednesday 12/18/24
Thru the Bible: Psalm Book III: Chapters 81-82
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When Eloheem refers to a human judge
Psalm 81:1-16, (NET)
“(1) For the music director; according to the gittith style; by Asaph.”
Gittith may be in reference to a musical instrument, like a Gittie harp or it may be in reference to a style of music in which case the three musical instruments mentioned in verse 2 might be standard fare for that type of song. In the end these are just guesses though.
“Shout for joy to God, our source of strength!
Shout out to the God of Jacob!
(2) Sing a song and play the tambourine, the pleasant sounding harp, and the ten-stringed instrument!
(3) Sound the ram’s horn on the day of the new moon, and on the day of the full moon when our festival begins. (4) For observing the festival is a requirement for Israel; it is an ordinance given by the God of Jacob.”
The words “our festival” seems to point to a specific one on the Jewish calendar.
The words used for “new” and “full moon” are a little ambiguous if taken alone. Since Israel’s calendar was lunisolar and several of their holidays occurred on a full moon it is hard to be emphatic in regard to which festival was in view here. [For lunisolar see – The Exodus & Gabriel’s enigma & the Father’s love]
The surrounding evidence however all but specifically identifies Passover as the festival in question.
The mention of the ram’s horn, the full moon, the required observance and the exclusivity of the words “our festival” seems to point in this direction.
All of Israel’s feasts were national feasts and therefore could be called “ours” by them, but to say this without reference to a specific festival would seem to point to Passover which is the most important festival associated with a full moon and was part and parcel with the Exodus. (See Exodus 12:60)
As to the mention of the “new moon”, it was celebrated every month in the Jewish faith and was called Rosh Chodesh. So this would be the “new moon” or “head of the month” of Passover and would therefore refer to the month of Nisan which for us is sometime in March or April.
The next words justify our conclusion by making direct reference to Israel’s deliverance from Egypt.
“(5) He decreed it as a regulation in Joseph, when he attacked the land of Egypt. I heard a voice I did not recognize. (6) It said:
“I removed the burden from his shoulder; his hands were released from holding the basket. (7) In your distress you called out and I rescued you. I answered you from a dark thundercloud. I tested you at the waters of Meribah.” (Selah)
The allusions to a thunderbolt and Meribah are out of chronological order in reference to Israel and their wanderings.
Meribah points to when God made a covenant with Israel when He satisfied their thirst by having Moses strike the rock at the base of Mount Horeb and a river of water flowed in the desert. God named that place Massah and Meribah meaning waters of strife in the desert.
This was considered cutting covenant with Israel since the Rock represented Jesus who also was struck for us in crucifixion for the ratifying of the New Covenant and blood and water came from His wounds. This connection is made in the New Testament book of 1 Corinthians which says,
“(4) and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from a spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ. (5) But God was not pleased with most of them, for they were struck down in the desert. (6) Now these things became examples for us, so that we will not desire evil as they did.”– 1 Corinthians 10:4-6
The allusion to the thunderbolt is in reference to the time God came down on the mountain at Sinai to speak with Israel.
Exodus 20:18-21, “(18) All the people witnessed the thunder and lightning, the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain surrounded by smoke.
When the people saw it they trembled and stood at a distance.
(19) “You speak to us, and we will listen,” they said to Moses, “but don’t let God speak to us, or we will die.”
(20) Moses responded to the people, “Don’t be afraid, for God has come to test you, so that you will fear Him and will not sin.”
(21) And the people remained standing at a distance as Moses approached the thick darkness where God was.”
The account given to the second generation at the Jordan in Deuteronomy is even more illuminating…
Deuteronomy 5:1-4, “(1) Moses summoned all Israel and said to them, “Israel, listen to the statutes and ordinances I am proclaiming as you hear them today. Learn and follow them carefully. (2) The LORD our God made a covenant with us at Horeb. (3) He did not make this covenant with our fathers, but with all of us who are alive here today. (4) The LORD spoke to you face to face from the fire on the mountain.”
AND
Deuteronomy 5:23-33, “(23) All of you approached me with your tribal leaders and elders when you heard the voice from the darkness and while the mountain was blazing with fire. (24) You said, ‘Look, the LORD our God has shown us His glory and greatness, and we have heard His voice from the fire. Today we have seen that God speaks with a person, yet he still lives. (25) But now, why should we die? This great fire will consume us and we will die if we hear the voice of the LORD our God any longer. (26) For who out of all mankind has heard the voice of the living God speaking from the fire, as we have, and lived? (27) Go near and listen to everything the LORD our God says. Then you can tell us everything the LORD our God tells you; we will listen and obey.’ (28) “The LORD heard your words when you spoke to me. He said to me, ‘I have heard the words that these people have spoken to you. Everything they have said is right. (29) If only they had such a heart to fear Me and keep all My commands, so that they and their children will prosper forever. (30) Go and tell them: Return to your tents. (31) But you stand here with Me, and I will tell you every command–the statutes and ordinances–you are to teach them, so that they may follow them in the land I am giving them to possess.’ (32) “Be careful to do as the LORD your God has commanded you; you are not to turn aside to the right or the left. (33) Follow the whole instruction the LORD your God has commanded you, so that you may live, prosper, and have a long life in the land you will possess.”
So Asaph is pointing back to these times when God reached out to Israel, meeting their needs both natural and spiritual coupled with a remembrance of Israel’s faithless response.
You will recognize some of the words we just read in Exodus and Deuteronomy in what remains of this Psalm of Asaph.
“(8) I said, ‘Listen, my people! I will warn you! O Israel, if only you would obey Me!
(9) There must be no other god among you. You must not worship a foreign god. (10) I am the LORD, your God, the one who brought you out of the land of Egypt. Open your mouth wide and I will fill it!’
(11) But My people did not obey Me; Israel did not submit to Me.
(12) I gave them over to their stubborn desires; they did what seemed right to them.
(13) If only My people would obey Me! If only Israel would keep my commands!
(14) Then I would quickly subdue their enemies, and attack their adversaries.”
(15) (May those who hate the LORD cower in fear before Him! May they be permanently humiliated!)
(16) “I would feed Israel the best wheat, and would satisfy your appetite with honey from the rocky cliffs.”
This last statement of honey from the rocky cliffs is interesting. Israel’s portion of the Middle East is replete with bees and honey. Some of the highest quality honey around the world comes from higher altitudes and in the Middle East this was most certainly true and it was most often located where bees had nested in the cleft of rocks in the mountains.
Though this does not play a part in Asaph’s reason for mentioning this here in this Psalm, a semi recent study has discovered that High altitude Acacia honey had significantly more effective anticancer activity against HCT116 and MCF7 cells compared with low altitude honey.
Psalm 82:1-8,
Holman translation
Now this Psalm introduces a great opportunity to place in plain sight the honest uncertainty of the translation of a pivotal word.
Part of better understanding this passage as well is the rhythm of the narrator. Like in the previous Psalm 81, Psalm 82 goes back and forth between words which are clearly spoken by God Himself and those spoken by Asaph.
It follows the Menorah pattern: seven ideas in a 3 – 1 – 3 pattern. Often the single and central idea is echoed outward from the middle towards the beginning and the end equally. In this case the center of the Psalm is verse 5. Echoing upward towards the beginning of the Psalm is all written from God’s perspective and in the first person. Whereas verses 6-8 are all the words and contemplations of Asaph and are rendered as first person from him.
We will read the Psalm in its entirety, but feel free to stop me or make a comment if at any point you find something off. When we are done I will ask you to give me its meaning. It will be interesting to see how you translate it. After all of this I will show you, upon what basis the translators made the English word substitution that they did, so that you can learn.
“(1) A psalm of Asaph.
God has taken His place in the divine assembly; He judges among the gods:
(2) “How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked? Selah
(3) Provide justice for the needy and the fatherless; uphold the rights of the oppressed and the destitute.
(4) Rescue the poor and needy; save them from the hand of the wicked.”
(5) They do not know or understand; they wander in darkness. All the foundations of the earth are shaken.
(6) I said, “You are gods; you are all sons of the Most High. (7) However, you will die like men and fall like any other ruler.”
(8) Rise up, God, judge the earth, for all the nations belong to You.”
The key words here are “god” and “gods”. Both of these words are the same, only one is plural. It is Eloheem.
As I pointed out to you WAY back in Genesis just a few short weeks into our Trek ‘Thru the Bible’ back in January 11, 2017 [See Thru the Bible Series] the word Eloheem can have various meanings. It is used 2,605 times in scripture appearing as both singular and plural and even both male and female for pagan gods and can mean…
- God Himself and in fact does in the great majority of cases. This includes a single reference which means “towards God” in [Exodus 18:19] – 2373x’s.
- It can refer to the false gods of the nations – Idols – 217x’s.
- It can mean godly though used this way only once in [Malachi 2:15]. 1x
- If can sometimes mean spiritual beings, though only one absolutely confirmed account of this is found in all of scripture 1x [Psalm 8:5 confirmed by tube writer of Hebrews as meaning angel in Hebrews 2:7 since the word “angels” in Greek aggelos never means God but only angel or messenger].
- It can mean great and powerful things, events or places – 1x [1 Samuel 14:15 & Jonah 3:3]
- It can mean men of power and influence – 2x’s [1 Samuel 2:25 & here in Psalm 81:5]
In this place it clearly means human judges and I will show you how we know this to be true.
First off this Psalm begins with a phrase which will set the reader on a pathway of thinking which is based solely upon the discretion of the translators. Now I DO NOT mean this as a slur against them. The translators of the New English Translation have done what I believe all translations would have been doing from the onset. They have assumed a certain level of transparency with the public by explaining the various translation possibilities of various words and phrases. They then explain to the reader upon what basis their team of translators chose the words they did to represent the original words and thoughts.
In the case of this passage I couldn’t disagree with their word choices more, but I love their integrity in explaining why they chose the way they did.
The translation of this Psalm I used is the Holman. He treated this passage as did the NET but with less force. He rendered it as,
“God has taken His place in the divine assembly; He judges among the gods”
Whereas the NET’s translation has it this way,
“God stands in the assembly of El; in the midst of the gods He renders judgment.”
These phrases though theologically not wrong lead the reader in terms of interpretation along a predetermined pathway. It sounds as if this is talking about the assembly seen by Micaiah mentioned in 1 Kings 22:19. [See Ahab… King, Warrior, Big Baby]
In THAT assembly Micaiah saw God as judge over mankind and undefined spiritual beings of both good and evil sorts were present to carry out His verdicts. This is the same place where satan appears as the accuser of the brethren. Ahab, the evil king of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, had allowed his wife Jezebel to rule from the side and had led that portion of Israel into idol worship of Baal. You may remember that Elijah had taunted the prophets of Baal, challenging them to have Baal rain fire down from heaven to consume the sacrifices. When they could not he had water poured over the sacrifices of God and the Lord consumed the sacrifices and the water as is recorded in 1 Kings 18 and 2 Kings 1.
All of this was under Ahab’s evil lack of leadership. This would have been bad enough, but God had promised to have Ahab killed in the same location as the Naboth of the tribe of Issachar who had been killed through the lies of Jezebel to procure his vineyard for her husband. The dogs licked up Naboth’s blood and God promised they would do the same to Ahab when his time came. The judgement we see taking place in 1 Kings 22 was when God decreed that verdict to be carried out against Ahab.
So we know that such an assembly DOES exist. However we are not 100% certain who the spirits were who appeared before God’s throne of judgement. We assume them to be angels and demons but the truth is we cannot know for the passage is silent regarding who they were.
So far as we know, only angels (the non-fallen variety) have ever been proven to be referred to as Eloheem.
It is interesting that the Message translation actually does a surprisingly decent job here rendering verse 1 as – “God calls the judges into His courtroom, He puts all the judges in the dock.” – Psalm 82:1
This does a good job without leading the reader in any particular direction.
So how can we know who these Eloheem were? Again CONTEXT comes to our rescue!
The scriptures say surprisingly little regarding angels.
- We know they always appear as male. (The passage in Zechariah 5:9 of two winged women never refer to them as angels and may only be a metaphorical depiction in Zechariah’s vision)
- They are messengers and servants in God’s house.
- They come in both fallen and non-fallen varieties.
- The holy angels serve God and his household including us.
- The fallen angels are referred to as belonging to the devil (Matt. 25:41 & Rev. 12:9)
- The entirety of their activities seem to center on mankind – they bring us messages, they behold the face of God on our behalf, they provide protection and they continually watch us.
What we absolutely NEVER hear is their role as judges.
In fact, when it comes time to judge the angels, the holy angels are not called upon to arbitrate, but the people of God will be their judges – 1 Corinthians 6:3.
As such, there can only be one interpretation to who these judges are and therefore we know by what name to translate the otherwise ambiguous term Eloheem.
So now that we have tacked that down let’s re-read the passage and see if this interpretation fits.
Psalm 82:1-8,
“(1) A Psalm of Asaph. God stands in the congregation of the mighty; He judges among the gods.”
This first sentence is a form of poetic parallelism where the first portion is repeated by the second only using different words and makes the action of the statement clearer.
- God stands in the congregation of the mighty
- God judges among the Eloheem. Which we now know should be rendered the powerful or the judges, the second being preferred due to the first phrase in the second verse.
“(2) How long will you JUDGE unjustly, And show partiality to the wicked? Selah”
(3) Defend the poor and fatherless; Do justice to the afflicted and needy. (4) Deliver the poor and needy; Free them from the hand of the wicked.
“(5) They do not know, nor do they understand; They walk about in darkness; All the foundations of the earth are unstable.”
(6) I said, “You are gods, And all of you are children of the Most High. (7) But you shall die like men, And fall like one of the princes.”
This passage is more difficult but it does not call into question our former conclusions that those references are in fact themselves humans.
The phrase “You are gods” is being said by Asaph and could just as easily be interpreted as “powerful” or “influential” men.
The phrase “you will die like men, and fall like one of the princes” could just as accurately be translated as “you will die or be destroyed or fall like other rulers or kings”. All of these are well within the translation radius of these Hebrew words.
“(8) Arise, O God, judge the earth; For You shall inherit all nations.”
Again the key to this passage is the fact that if this scripture is referring to angels judging it is the ONLY case in all the bible and therefore cannot be used to prove itself. There would need to be at least two or three witnesses to this as truth in order for it to stand here as a possible understanding of the passage. You cannot use prima facie understanding as proof of accurate interpretation. What you need is exterior testimony for corroboration.
In closing I will read this whole Psalm from the Message translation. As you know I am NOT a fan of this translation to teach or study from and for good reason. In fact in this Psalm they totally destroy the flow, the Menorah structure I of the composition which I mentioned earlier and even take the words of Asaph and personalize them as God’s Own words.
Nevertheless in this case as in some others, I truly love the wording they chose.
While this passage seems a little rough around the edges, I think it does a superior job when compared with dozens of others who typically are otherwise scholarly translations.
Psalm 82:1-8,
“(1) An Asaph psalm.
God calls the judges into his courtroom, he puts all the judges in the dock.
(2) “Enough! You’ve corrupted justice long enough, you’ve let the wicked get away with murder. (3) You’re here to defend the defenseless, to make sure that underdogs get a fair break; (4) Your job is to stand up for the powerless, and prosecute all those who exploit them.”
(5) Ignorant judges! Head-in-the-sand judges! They haven’t a clue to what’s going on. And now everything’s falling apart, the world’s coming unglued.
(6) “I commissioned you judges, each one of you, deputies of the High God, (7) But you’ve betrayed your commission and now you’re stripped of your rank, busted.”
(8) O God, give them their just deserts! You’ve got the whole world in your hands!”
Finally I will do as I told you I would and show you WHY so many have translated this passage so erroneously.
I am simply reading to you the translation notes which come with the New English Translation.
“The phrase עֲדַת אֵל (ʿadat ʾel, “assembly of El”) appears only here in the OT.
(1) Some understand “El” to refer to God Himself.
In this case He is pictured presiding over His Own heavenly assembly.
(2) Others take אֵל as a superlative here (“God stands IN the great assembly”), as in Psalm 36:6 and Psalm 80:10.
(3) The present translation ASSUMES this is a reference to the Canaanite high god El, who presided over the Canaanite divine assembly. (See Isaiah 14:13, where El’s assembly is called “the stars of El.”)
In the Ugaritic myths the phrase [ʿdt ʾilm] refers to the “assembly of the gods,” who congregate in King Kirtu’s house, where Baal asks El to bless Kirtu’s house (see G. R. Driver, Canaanite Myths and Legends, 91).
IF the Canaanite divine assembly is referred to here in Psalm 82:1, THEN the psalm must be understood as a bold polemic against Canaanite religion.
Israel’s God invades El’s assembly, denounces its gods as failing to uphold justice, and announces their coming demise.” [See Lucifer & Babylon’s King]
The present translation ASSUMES that the Hebrew term אֱלֹהִים (ʾelohim, “gods”) here refers to the pagan gods who supposedly comprise El’s assembly according to Canaanite religion. Those who reject the polemical view of the psalm prefer to see the referent as human judges or rulers (אֱלֹהִים sometimes refers to officials appointed by God, see Exodus 21:6; Exodus 22:8-9; Psalm 45:6) or as angelic beings (אֱלֹהִים sometimes refers to angelic beings, see Genesis 3:5; Psalm 8:5).”
Blessings!
Tri
