Psalm 82:1 says "God has taken his place in the divine council." What does that mean? How should we understand the realm of the unseen that the Bible tells us so much about?
It is a good thing to be suspicious of strange new doctrine. On the other hand, it is a bad thing to continue on in error if our worldview has led us to a faulty and unhelpful understanding of the spiritual realm. The text of the Old Testament plainly contradicts several conceptions we modern believers hold—with no biblical basis—about the nature of the unseen. Psalm 82 brings all of them out in the most concise and profound way.
The first verse of this psalm alone serves up several phrases and ideas that tend to trip up a devout modernist: the divine council, the gods—it begins to sound like one of those ancient pagan pantheons. Surely that’s not what the psalmist expects us to believe? It is at this point that we tend to shrug and turn away from the text, filing it under either “poetic license” or “things I’ll get around to understanding later.”
The good news is that scholars have been especially productive in the last 20 years expounding the meaning of this divine council and how the Bible tells its story—that is, what it has to do with us. We can begin with one indisputable point that is plain from the Hebrew text:
The Hebrew word elohim is not a proper name for God, it’s a designation for beings without physical form.
In the Old Testament, elohim can refer to YHWH, to members of YHWH’s divine council, to the gods and goddesses of other names, to demons, and to angels or the Angel of the Lord. In one especially curious passage, elohim refers to the disembodied spirit of the prophet Samuel in 1 Sam. 28:13. Elohim simply does not always mean God.
This helps us grasp the concept of a council or assembly of what Ps. 82:1 calls elohim. This council is a celestial form of government created and appointed by God to carry out His will. God doesn’t “need” the council, but it’s the means he chose in the beginning to carry out his will. This council precedes the creation of the earth (Job 38:4–7) and has interfered in human history (Gen. 6:1–2, about which more next week).
Monotheism means refusing to worship anyone or anything but God.
Even though elohim doesn’t mean what we’ve been told it means, there is a word in Hebrew—a title for our God—that speaks of his uniqueness: Elyon. This name is translated “God Most High,” meaning “highest of the elohim.” This line of thinking gives rise to soaring notes of monotheistic praise like: “Who is like you among the gods, YHWH?” (Ex. 15:11) “For you, O YHWH, are most high over all the earth. You are exalted above all gods” (Ps. 97:9). “What god is there in the heaven or on the earth who can do according to your works and according to your mighty deeds?” (Deut. 3:24) Even the great monotheistic creed, “The Lord our God, the Lord is one,” both speaks of the reality of lesser, created “gods” and of the absolute superiority of Israel’s covenant God, who calls himself YHWH.
There are multitudes of elohim, but only one YHWH—that’s what “God Most High” means.
Many of the strangest passages in the Bible begin to clear up once we adopt the supernatural worldview of the Bible. Perhaps most importantly, this theological backstory gives rich content to a line from the Great Commission that most of us have taken for granted.
After his victory was won and as he prepared to take his throne in heaven, Jesus told his disciples, “All authority in heaven has been given to me.” He is not being poetic or using a figure of speech. Jesus is speaking of the authority of the divine council, and asserting that all of its former power to govern the nations now belongs to Him. This is just one example of the many ways this worldview affects our thinking. For the next two weeks, we will explore other implications of the biblical theology of the divine council and Christ’s authority.