This psalm appears to describe a
vision (vv. 1-7), followed by a prayer for God to come to the earth as judge of
all the nations (v. 8). My understanding is that the scene narrates a
confrontation that happens in the heavenly angelic council, over which God
presides. God is convicting, and sentencing to death some of the angelic beings
of the council, who are here referred to as ‘elohim, “gods” (v. 1), and
as “sons/children of God” (v. 6). The charge they are guilty of is that of
subverting justice in human affairs on the earth. This connects with the
biblical theme of angelic beings having a divinely sanctioned role in human
affairs—a role that many of them misuse, with heavenly consequences for
humanity. There is, of course, a familiar NT idea of demons as rebellious
angelic beings that plague human individuals interfere in people’s lives in
various ways. But in addition to this, we can also discern a well-developed
biblical theme of large-scale destructive angelic involvement or interference
in the affairs of humanity. In other words, angelic don’t just plague
individuals; a number of biblical writers see them being involved on a social
structure level, a national level, and even on an international level.
Psalm 82 is more evocative than
explicit, but it is my understanding that it refers to these kinds of angelic
influence on a social level, and that v. 5 pictures the fate of the unjust ‘elohim
when they are judged and punished by God at the transition point between the
current age of human history and the coming age of renewal and recreation of
the world.
They have neither knowledge nor
understanding; they walk around in darkness; all the foundations of the earth
are shaken. (v. 5).
At the critical moment of the
dissolution of the present creation, the disobedient and destructive ‘elohim
find themselves disempowered and consigned to the prison of the formless
underworld, with the result that their former ability to influence the course
of human affairs is completely taken away (cf. Isa. 24:22; Rev. 20:1-2). For
the psalmist, it is common knowledge that human princes (and all human beings)
go to Sheol, the dark and formless underworld, when they die (see esp. Isa
14:3-21; Ezek 32:17-32). But in the psalmist’s vision, God sends the unjust ‘elohim
into the same state of total powerlessness and lifelessness, into the same
formless underworld. Thus it says, “you shall die like mortals, and fall like
any prince” (v. 7). (J. Webb Mealy, The End of the Unrepentant: A Study of
the Biblical Themes of Fire and Being Consumed [Eugene, Oreg.: Wipf and
Stock, 2013], 49)
In a footnote to in support of there being “destructive angelic
involvement or interference in the affairs of humanity,” we read the following:
See Gen. 6:1-4; Job 1:6-2:8;
Daniel 10:1-11:1; many places in 1 Enoch (a non-canonical book that was
familiar to, and regarded as prophetic by, some NT writers such as Jude); and
many places in the NT such as Mt. 4:1-11; Lk. 4:1-15; Rom. 8:38; 1 Cor. 6:3;
Eph. 6:12; col. 2;15; 2 Pet. 2:4; Judge 5 (referring to Gen. 6:1-4); Rev.
9:14-15; 12:7-17; 20:1-3, 7-10. We can gather the following principles from
reading a passage such as the ones just cited: (1) that God treats angels as
being worthy and capable of receiving delegated authority; (2) that angels, no
less than human beings, are not only capable of making moral choices, but of
making destructive moral choices; (3) that angels, no less than human
beings, have been created into the identity of children of God, with all that
implies about their worth and their full accountability to God; and (4) that
angels, no less than human beings, stand under the threat of having their
powers of life and agency removed if God judges them to have persisted in
misusing these gifts. (Ibid., 49 n. 56)
