Tuesday, April 12, 2022

J. Webb Mealy vs. the "human rulers" understanding of the Elohim/Gods in Psalm 82

  

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)