like humans you shall die, /
and like one of the princes, fall. Because the gods have failed in their
crucial role as executors of justice, they are henceforth compelled to
relinquish their supposedly divine status and suffer the same fate of mortality
as human beings. The parallel term to ʾadam (“humans,” or “man,” though
the Hebrew does not imply gender), “one of the princes,” reflects a kind of
hierarchical logic. One does not readily imagine the ex-gods turning into
peasants, but all people know that even the most elevated of human beings—princes
and potentates—are fated to die. (Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible, 3
vols. [New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2019], 3:201)
