Elohim hear is plural. And you say, "well, maybe that's the Trinity." Wrong!
Because if you go down and look at the verse, the capital G Elohim,
who is leading the council meeting is excoriating the other elohim for their corruption.
Okay, we're not talking about the Trinity here, that would be extraordinarily bad theology.
Briefly addressed the issues in Psalm 82. So let's go out there.
And in the very first verse, again, my view is real simple.
The psalm actually means what it says,
okay, it doesn't really get any more complicated than that.
So let's talk briefly about what it says and again, why we get certain objections to it.
But if you've done the reading, you have more detail there.
But the first verse, «God has taken his place in the divine council.»
I'm going to click on "God." And you'll notice, let's see if I can do this correctly.
Again, I'm playing without a net a little bit. There we go.
Here we have Psalm 82:1, «God has taken his place in the divine council»,
and right over here, we have Elohim. Right there, you notice the blue.
So we've got «Elohim has taken his place in the divine council.»
Okay. "’ĕ·lō·hîm niṣ·ṣāḇ ba·‘ă·ḏaṯ-’êl" in Hebrew,
and then the second line is «in the midst of the gods.» Let's click on "gods"
again. And you will notice, if I do this correctly, hey, we did it again.
You will notice that this "gods" right here is also Elohim. Right there.
So we've got Elohim, two times in the same verse.
The first occurrence is capital G-O-D singular. Why? Because if we click on
«taken his place», "niṣ·ṣāḇ" if we hover over that, that is a singular participle,
singular, grammatically singular. So Elohim, even though the shape of the word,
the morphology of the word is plura Elohim, is a plural word.
It's paired with a singular noun, which tells you to how to translate it.
Semantically, it refers to one deity, capital G-O-D. Now we have words like
this in English, that don't mean anything, even though they look plural,
they may not be plural: fish, deer.
You don't know if I mean one or more than one until I put it into a sentence.
Okay, "the fish is swimming", "the fish are swimming." One is singular, the other is plural.
That's grammar. Hebrew is the same way and Elohim is a classic illustration of this.
So Elohim here with a singular verb, one deity, but the next line;
«in the midst of the gods he holds judgment», in the midst of the Elohim.
You can't be in the midst of just one. It has to be a group.
Elohim here is plural. And you say, "well, maybe that's the Trinity." Wrong!
Because if you go down and look at the verse, verses 2-5,
the capital G Elohim, who is leading the council meeting is excoriating
the other elohim for their corruption, and their wickedness and their injustice.
Okay, we're not talking about the Trinity here, that would be extraordinarily bad theology.
But what typically happens, let me flip back to the slide,
is that there are a number of people who would say "well, these are people.
The gods here are just people, Mike. You know, silly Mike. Move along citizen,
here's nothing to see here."
Again, that is a deeply flawed idea. These are not Israelite judges.
They're not Israelite magistrates or rulers. Okay, and they're not idols.
"Well, how do we know? Mike." Well let's take the easy one first, okay.
God does not have idols in his employ. Idols are not members of God's Council.
Idols... let's go down to verse 6. Turn that off for a bit.
God speaking to the members of the council «I said, “You»,
if we, let's just turn this back on. So that we can get this here.
«You», you'll notice if we hover over «You» down here in the corner,
that is a plural pronoun. So «You» plural are Elohim, gods right there it is, again.
«You [plural] are Elohim, sons [plural] of the Most High»
We know who the Most High is, that would be God. Okay, the God of the Bible.
So these Elohim are sons of God, and there's a group of them. There's a bunch of them,
okay. The sons of God in no other passage in the Bible are idols,
you know, pieces of wood and stone. But the real kicker is when we go over to Psalm 89.
Here's where it becomes totally comical and absurd to think this way.
Okay, Psalm 89:5-7. «Let the heavens praise your wonders, O Lord,
your faithfulness in the assembly of the holy ones!»
There we have counsel language, assembly.
«For who in the skies can be compared to the Lord?
Who among the heavenly beings is like the Lord, a God greatly to be feared
in the council of the holy ones.»
Now, number two, here it says Hebrew sons of God, okay?
It's "Bene Elim" in Hebrew, sons of God. Doesn't mean "sons of might",
it mean "Sons of God" Bene Elim. It's the same...
It's the equivalent to Psalm 82 verses 6 "sons of the Most High."
It's equivalent to sons of God in Job 1:6, Job 2:1, Genesis 6:2.
Sons of God, this phrase; Bene Elim, Bene Elohim, Bene Ha Elohim.
Job 38 is another one. All of these references refer to members of the heavenly host.
Okay, it's as simple as concording them and looking them up.
There are no idols ruling from the skies in a council.
There are no Jewish elders ruling from the skies or in the skies in a council.
Okay, this is patently absurd. And yet you will see this a lot in the academic discussion.
Now, if you do the reading for the class, you look at the footnotes
and some of the optional reading. I've done peer reviewed
scholarly papers on this, conference papers, you get the information,
I'm going to move on here. I'm not going to spend the whole time on this.
But Psalm 89 is really the death blow to the human view of Psalm 82.
And the human view of a Divine Council. There are no Jewish...
in Old Testament history you never have Jewish elders assigned to rule the nations,
let's just go back, from the skies. Because look at the way Psalm 82 ends;
«Arise, O God, judge the earth; for you shall inherit all the nations!»
But where do we get that? I thought God was king of the world.
Like, what do you mean "inherit the nations"?
It's language that goes back to Deuteronomy 32:8-9, the Babel event,
where God divorced the nations. Israel was his inheritance.
And he makes a covenant with Abram, and with Israel to bless the other nations,
and again, the whole kingdom of priests idea, bringing the nations back into the fold.
We're going to see a little bit more about that, not only in this session,
but sessions that follow.
How the gospel is the fulfillment, the already and the not yet, of this vision;
that God will one day judge the gods of the nations, and inherit all the nations back.