It was Bring Your Dad to School Day and the little elementary school girl was so excited to introduce her father and tell the class what he does for work.
“My Dad is a public serpent,” she exclaimed.
Obviously, she mean “public servant,” but there are times when it seems as if public servants are more like serpents. The very people who are supposed to protect the poor and vulnerable become their abusers instead. All who are abusive draw the wrath of God, but none draw it more than those who twist their roles as protectors into predators. In each of these situations, people are given power to be used for others and they end up using that power for themselves, misusing others.
Biblically, God is the source of power. So those who wield power are supposed to do so as extensions of his purposes. They’ve been given the tools and authority to extend his life-giving rule. So, when they use it for personal gain and the abuse of others, he’s angry with both the abuse of the vulnerable and the abuse of his shared power.
The Hebrew word elohim is a plural word (all words ending in -im are masculine plural words), meaning “gods” in its most basic usage. But although it is plural in form, it can also be used as a singular noun, which it is when applied to Yahweh. In that case, it’s rendered as “God.” Interestingly, in Psalm 82, the word refers to judges, the humans who stand in the place God who is the one true Judge of all people. There’s a bit of sarcastic irony when it does so, because judging is an attempt to be like gods.
In Genesis 3, the fruit that Eve and Adam eat to be like gods isn’t an apple. It’s a unique, mythic fruit coming from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. To eat of this tree is to eat something only God can eat. Only God has it within himself to judge accurately between good and evil, for only God sees all, including the motivations of our hearts. He sees our secret sins and he knows our secret thoughts. I don’t. The information at my disposal is too limited for me to be an adequate judge. And yet every time I see people, I size them up, deciding what I think of them from a few visual clues. We all do. It’s a form of judging.
I used to think I was good at this. But then I became a pastor and got drawn into marital messes where the couples were heading toward divorce. They’d tell me stories that conflicted with each other and I couldn’t tell who was telling the truth and who was lying. So, I concluded that none of us is very good at this. It’s a conclusion Malcolm Gladwell illustrates in his book Talking With Strangers. Not even intelligence professionals in the CIA and FBI whose job it is to tell if people are lying are very good at it, being able to tell only 53 percent of the time (which is equivalent to tossing a coin).
But we eat this forbidden fruit continually. We have an appetite for judging others. We do it in the grocery store line when we see tabloid papers spouting the latest lurid celebrity gossip. We do it with co-workers and pastors and friends and neighbors and people we pass on the street.
So, there are two levels to judging. There is the basic kind that we all do almost daily which is tied to our prejudices. And there is the official kind that a select few people do in their positions of power as judges. Both eat from the Tree. Both take God’s job.
Psalm 82 rails against the second kind who make a mess of their judging, siding against the poor and vulnerable instead of for them. It plays off of the word elohim, using the same word throughout the psalm but with different meanings. Sometimes, it refers to God and sometimes it refers to judges as “gods,” God-like in their use of power over people.
God presides in the great assembly;
he renders judgment among the “gods”: (Ps. 82:1)
The scene is the heavenly courtroom. It’s a great hall that is both royal court and judicial court at the same time, since there was no distinction between the two in the ancient Near East. The King on his throne is both Monarch and Judge. This matches what we see in Job 1-2, where the satan (Hebrew: accuser) is the accuser or prosecuting attorney against Job amid an audience of angelic beings.
There is debate about who is referred to by the word elohim at the end of the verse (the first usage referring to God). Are they Canaanite gods? Angels? I think the context of the rest of the psalm makes it clear. These are humans who are in positions of power to make legal decisions. Judges aren’t called “gods” elsewhere in the Scriptures, leading to the conclusion that they are called so here sarcastically. They are God-like in their roles and therefore they think of themselves with overly puffed up egos. Since there is no lack of people throughout history and today who fit that description, it’s no stretch.
But what we see here is that the judges are themselves being judged. The tables are being turned on them.
“How long will you defend the unjust
and show partiality to the wicked? (Ps. 82:2)
The tables are being turned on them because justice has been turned upside down by them. Instead of defending the just, they defend the unjust. Instead of ruling against the wicked, they go out of their way to take their side.
If that doesn’t sound like what is reported in the news day after day, you’re not reading the news. It’s an accepted reality that court verdicts depend on the amount of money spent not on the truth of the claims. Wealthy bankers whose market manipulations caused people to lose their retirement savings walk free while prisons fill with young African-American men who committed petty crimes.
The injustice in our system should make you angry. Why? Because it makes God angry.
Their primary goal is to provide justice for the poor and vulnerable, but they do the opposite, defending the unjust and wicked instead. So, God calls them back to their primary responsibility.
Defend the weak and the fatherless;
uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed.
Rescue the weak and the needy;
deliver them from the hand of the wicked (Ps. 82:3-4).
God has a soft spot in his heart for the weak and for those who are orphaned. In our contemporary context, where life expectancies have increased dramatically over biblical times, divorce is the new source of kids raised in homes without fathers.
There are plenty of articles like this one on the economics of divorce. But they tend to focus on the adults — and there are many financial and social consequences for adults whose marriages break apart. But kids raised without dads aren’t just poorer, they’re far more vulnerable to predatory men and get lost in the system far more easily. These kids are close to God’s heart.
Real justice sees its goal as making sure the vulnerable aren’t gouged by slum lords and mafia dons, pawn shops and crooked cops. Real justice makes sure the laws of the land don’t benefit the wealthy over against the poor, massive corporations over mom and pop shops. Real justice looks around with eyes wide open and see those who are getting trampled and runs off the bullies. Real justice finds the vampires in our society who suck the blood of the poor and knocks out their fangs.
“The ‘gods’ know nothing, they understand nothing.
They walk about in darkness;
all the foundations of the earth are shaken (Ps. 82:5).
Justice isn’t blind. Judges are blind to justice. Justice sees!
The Greek ideal of blindfolded Justice is intended to refer to her impartiality. But too often it means blindness to the real crimes being committed and the real injustices being suffered. The biblical ideal of justice has its eyes wide open, seeing all that is wrong so it can actively rectify it.
Because of entrenched injustice, the land is shaken. The whole nation suffers when the courts no longer uphold justice. (The Hebrew word eretz means “land” and can be translated as “earth,” but here refers to the land of the nation since it’s the nation and not the planet that is shaken. In fact, most uses of eretz which are translated as “earth” should be translated as “land,” since the Scriptures tend to have the local in mind more than the global.)
“I said, ‘You are “gods”;
you are all sons of the Most High.’
But you will die like mere mortals;
you will fall like every other ruler” (Ps. 82:6-7)
Outside of two references in the book of Job (1:6; 38:7), the term sons of God (or sons of the gods) doesn’t refer to angelic beings. Everywhere else, it refers to kings and princely people (notice 82:7 ends by comparing them to “every other ruler,” meaning they are in the same bag with the rest of the rulers like them). In our context, it would be celebrities and stars and politicians. We adore them. We bow before them as a culture. And here, judges are included in their echelon.
They act godlike. They act as if they’re immortal. They act as if they’re above the rules. But the most basic rule of all brings them crashing down to the earth: their mortality. Every human dies. Every ruler dies. And death will be their fate as well.
Since these judges will amount to nothing in the end and since their verdicts are so flawed and perverted in the meantime, we need another judge. We need the Judge.
Rise up, O God, judge the earth,
for all the nations are your inheritance (Ps. 82:8).
We need God to judge the land. We need him to bring his justice into this place where justice is so elusive.
God loves each nation and treasures each one as his inheritance (not just Israel, not just America, not just wherever you live). He will bring his justice not just to my land, but to all peoples everywhere.
And in this current context of injustice, that assurance may seem too little, too late. But even if it feels that way at the moment, we are guaranteed that his justice will come and it will have the final word on each of our lives. God will bring justice in this world and ultimately in the age to come.
And so the psalm ends with a prayer: “Get up and get busy, God! Slam your gavel down! You love us like we’re your own kids, so treat us like it!” It’s the prayer we should pray every time we see injustice in the world.