before gods. This
implicitly polytheistic phrase has troubled interpreters through the ages. The
Aramaic Targum rendered it, not very convincingly, as “judges.” Following this
line, Rashi and other medieval exegetes understood it as a reference to the
Sanhedrin (!). It is most plausible to see here either a linguistic fossil from
polytheism or even an anti-polytheistic polemic gesture: I hymn to You in
defiant presence before all those deities that people imagine to be real gods. (Robert
Alter, The Hebrew Bible, 3 vols. [New York: W. W. Norton & Company,
2019], 3:315)
