Psalm 82 is a favourite psalm among Latter-day Saints (for a discussion, see, for e.g., Stephen O. Smoot, Psalm 82: A Latter-day Saint Reading). Approaching the text from a study of its rhetoric, as well as its parallels to Psa 4 and 62, Davida H. Charney, Professor in the Department of Rhetoric and Writing at the University of Texas, Austin, wrote the following
Psalm 82: Persuading Gods
The rhetorical situation employed in Psalm 4 and Psalm 62 involves a speaker offering himself and his ongoing experiences as a living example to the audience. Hearers who are already in close alignment with the speaker’s values see them as validated, while those opposed in some way are rebuked but also invited to take specific steps toward the speaker and away from more extreme opponents.
Psalm 82 (Alter, The Book of Psalms, pp. 291-93)
1 An Asaph psalm. God takes His stand in the divine assembly, in the midst of the gods He renders judgment.
2 ‘How long will you judge dishonestly, and show favor to the wicked? Selah
3 Do justice to the poor and the orphan. Vindicate the lowly and the wretched.
4 Free the poor and needy, from the hand of the wicked save them.
5 They do not know and do not grasp, in darkness they walk about. All the earth’s foundations totter.
6 As for Me, I had thought you were gods, and the sons of the Most High were you all.
7 Yet indeed like humans you shall die, and like one of the princes, fall’.
8 Arise O God, judge the earth, for You hold in estate all the nations.
This rhetorical situation arguably applies in one additional psalm, Psalm 82. In this case of course, the speaker addressing a straying audience is not an ordinary person but God, and the opponents are other gods. The unique opening verse sets the context from an otherworldly observer’s standpoint. Yet Psalm 82 shares many features with the other two psalms. The preponderance of space is devoted to direct address of the opponents from a first-person speaker, the rebuke takes the form of a question, and a process for returning to the right path is laid out in a series of imperatives (see Figure 2.4).
1 Context
2 Direct rebuke
3 Process
4 Process
5 Indirect rebuke
6 Direct rebuke
7 Direct rebuke
8 Appeal to God
Figure 2.4. Structure of Psalm 82
In light of the other two psalms, what seems most striking about Psalm 82 is its lack of persuasive strategies. The setting of the divine assembly portrays God among a set of peers. Without any first-person self-references in vv.1-2, however, there is little effort at positive identification. Rather than a sequence of self-help actions, the imperatives in vv.3-4, שׁפטו (‘judge’), הצדיקו (‘vindicate’), פלתו (‘rescue’) and הצילו (‘save’), all refer to actions the gods should take toward others, the lowly and the poor. These directives do allow the possibility that some gods might reform. The shift from second to third person in v. 5 allows for a dissociative reading, castigating some of the gods as worse than others. However, the speaker’s final statements return to addressing and condemning כלכם (‘all of you’) in the audience. On the whole, the absence of persuasive strategies indicates that the speaker is using the barest possible framework of claims with the intention more to condemn than to move the hearers.
Yet the similarities between Psalm 82 and the more persuasive Psalms 4 and 62 are enough to cause a productive resonance. The similarity of the rebukes in both form (questions) and content (favouring material success) underscore the moral force of the human speakers: no matter how powerful the human opponents, they can never hope to escape judgment any more than can foreign gods. Yet, from the perspective of Psalm 82, the human speakers in the other two psalms seem even more approachable to their peers. In their self-references, the human speakers do not man themselves out to be God-like; they admit to the need for safety and security. As a result, the actions that the speakers prescribe end up seeming more achievable. The more formal setting of the assembly and the language of judgment in Psalm 82 bespeak a final resolution or the wayward gods. The human opponents, by contrast, seem to be afforded much more opportunity to change their ways, rejoin the community of loyal Israelites and live. (Davida H. Charney, Persuading God: Rhetorical Studies of First-Person Psalms [Hebrew Bible Monographs, 73; Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2017], 52-54)
