What is the role of the God of Israel in Psalm 82?
There is no use of the term LORD (whose consonants YHWH may have been pronounced Yahweh), the personal name for the God of Israel, in the Hebrew of this chapter. The common word for the God of Israel (Elohim), which is identical to the plural “gods” (Elohim), occurs three times, twice in v. 1 and once in v. 8. In vv. 1 and 8 Elohim is used with a singular verb in all three occurrences, indicating that this is Elohim who is the same as the LORD elsewhere in the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible). Once the shortened form, El, occurs. This is in v. 1 where God presides in the assembly of El. Here El could be the leader of the pantheon, as at Ugarit, or it could be an object of the genitive that describes its character, e.g., “the assembly of god” or “the divine assembly.” This is almost certainly its referent here. In v. 5, the plural subject, “they do not know, they do not understand,” may refer to the divine assembly of v. 1. This text is sometimes connected with Deuteronomy 32:8-9. In the Dead Sea Scrolls and in the Septuagint (early Greek translation of the Old Testament) of Deuteronomy 23:8-9, the text allows for the translation, “sons of God,” rather than the Masoretic Text (the standard Hebrew text used in most translations of the Old Testament) which renders it, “the sons of Israel.” This difference is significant. If the Septuagint of Deuteronomy preserves the original text (supported by a broken but possible text in the Dead Sea Scrolls), and this is connected to Psalm 82, then this is evidence for the view that an El, who was chief of the gods but not the LORD of Israel, originally appointed the gods as in charge of their own nations, including the LORD (Yahweh) who was in charge of Israel. Psalm 82 is then interpreted as the overthrow of the gods and of El, and as the rise of the LORD (Yahweh) as supreme. However, the Masoretic Text’s “sons of Israel” is a perfectly reasonable reading and interpretation of the end of Deuteronomy 32:8. In that case “the number of the sons of Israel” is actually seventy according to Genesis 46:27. This can be related to the number of nations in Genesis 10 that may be counted as seventy. Then the Deuteronomy verse is the divine assignment of the known nations of the world to their territories. In such a case Psalm 82 has nothing directly to do with Deuteronomy 32:8-9. It serves rather as a description of the angels (i.e., “gods”) who are appointed to oversee the nations of the world but do not concern themselves with the needs of the weak and vulnerable classes. God accuses them of this and overthrows them and their rule. Perhaps the sense of a “god” in charge of a nation is related to the “prince of Persia” (and the “prince of Greece”?) who attempts to restrain the angel Michael, the angel sent to assist Daniel in Daniel 10:12-21.
