Psalm 82
1. God standeth in the congregation of God; He judgeth among the gods.2. How long will ye judge unjustly, And respect the persons of the wicked? Selah
3. Judge the poor and fatherless: Do justice to the afflicted and destitute.
4. Rescue the poor and needy: Deliver them out of the hand of the wicked.
5. They know not, neither do they understand; They walk to and fro in darkness: All the foundations of the earth are shaken.
6. I said, Ye are gods, And all of you sons of the Most High.
7. Nevertheless ye shall die like men, And fall like one of the princes.
8. Arise, O God, judge the earth; For thou shalt inherit all the nations.
Questions arise in our minds when we read this little psalm by Asaph.
1. The first question might be who is Asaph? Well, he was an Israeli poet or psalmist who also was a recorder or scribe and sometimes a prophet. Here is the story of his commissioning.
1 Chronicles 16:1 And they brought in the ark of God and placed it inside the tent which David had pitched for it, and they offered burnt offerings and peace offerings before God…. 4 He appointed some of the Levites {as} ministers before the ark of the LORD, even to celebrate and to thank and praise the LORD God of Israel: 5 Asaph the chief, … with musical instruments, harps, lyres; also Asaph {played} loud-sounding cymbals, 37 So he left Asaph and his relatives there before the ark of the covenant of the LORD to minister before the ark continually, as every day's work required;So the original Asaph was commissioned and left with the continual vocation of being in charge of all the music and singing and the records for it, which he passed on to his descendents who carried on their work for hundreds of years.
From the words of this psalm we infer that this Asaph lived in the time of the worst kings of Israel, the times when Isaiah and Jeremiah were prophesying.
2. Why does he call people gods? As the word is used here it means one who has the right or privilege of position of a leader, a ruler or a judge. The priests were judges of the moral rightness of the rest of the people of Israel, having the law of God to guide them. This psalm speaks directly to the judges, the leaders, it is not directed to the common people. Not to those who suffer but to those whose unfair judgements make them suffer.
3. What is the message of the psalm? That the supreme judge is concerned about His people and they need to know that He is standing among them and judging them. Also at the end of the psalm they are reminded that they are as human as the people they are denying justice to and will die as all humans do.
Asaph would be in the place where he would know what was going on in the justice system of the nation, that it was very bad. And he could well have been reading in Jeremiah
Jeremiah 11:1 The word that came to Jeremiah from Jehovah, saying, Hear ye the words of this covenant, and speak unto the men of Judah, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and say thou unto them, Thus saith Jehovah, the God of Israel: Cursed be the man that heareth not the words of this covenant, because of the evil of the house of Israel and of the house of Judah, which they have wrought for themselves in provoking me to anger by offering incense unto Baal. 18 And Jehovah gave me knowledge of it, and I knew it: then thou showedst me their doings… that they had devised devices against me, [saying], Let us destroy the tree with the fruit thereof, and let us cut him off from the land of the living, that his name may be no more remembered. 29 Shall I not visit for these things? saith Jehovah; shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this? 30 A wonderful and horrible thing is come to pass in the land: 31 the prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means; and my people love to have it so: and what will ye do in the end thereof?Today as we look at our justice system, our own gods if you will, we see that they also subvert moral justice by using their own standards instead of the Creator’s. Causes for good are condemned and causes of social humanism are championed. The real supreme Judge, though, is watching and He knows everything.
The warning is the same today as we read in the psalm, that those who are judging better be careful for they, we, may get away with it for a short while, but we will all die just like those we condemn, and after that the Judge of all will judge us.
Like the psalmist God's people cry out, “Arise O God and bring judgement on the earth.” And God will answer this prayer when Jesus the Saviour from sin shall reign and rule all nations.