Psalm 82 explained: God Puts the Judges on Trial

God calls the court (v. 1)

The scene is a courtroom where God is the judge and the accused are called "gods." Scholars are unsure who they are: many modern scholars think the poem pictures heavenly beings once believed to rule the nations, while older Jewish and Christian readers took them as human judges and rulers.

The charge of injustice (vv. 2-4)

God accuses them of siding with the wicked and twisting justice. Their real job was to protect people with no one else to help them: the poor, the fatherless and the oppressed.

Blind rulers, shaken world (v. 5)

They do not understand what they are doing and stumble around as if in the dark. When those in charge abandon justice, the poem says, the very foundations that hold the world together start to shake.

The sentence passed (vv. 6-7)

God gave them a high title, "sons of the Most High," but now they will die and fall like any human ruler. Jesus quoted verse 6 when he was accused of claiming to be God (John 10), and Christians read the verse partly in light of that moment.

A plea for real justice (v. 8)

The writer turns to God and asks him to rise and judge the whole earth himself, because the nations are his concern. Translations differ on whether this says the nations already belong to God or that he will one day take them as his own.

Key verse: Psalm 82:3

Where Christians differ

Christians differ on who the "gods" in this psalm are: human judges and rulers, or heavenly beings thought to oversee the nations, and this changes how the whole scene is understood.

Something to think about

When the people or systems meant to protect the vulnerable fail them, who or what do you think should hold them to account?