These posts are all excerpted from my newest booklet, Psalm 82: The Divine Council of the Gods, the Judgment of the Watchers and the Inheritance of the Nations. You can buy the booklet here.
In part one, I defined the biblical motif of Christus Victor as Christ’s victory over the spiritual powers who ruled sinful mankind. I defined the divine council biblically as an assembly of gods, called “Sons of God,” “holy ones,” and “heavenly host” who surround Yahweh, engage in legal counsel with him and carry out his decisions.
But the next question is, how did man come under the rule and authority of these gods, these divine beings from Yahweh’s heavenly host?
I am using Psalm 82 as a portal into this fascinating storyline of the Bible. So let’s take a look again at what it says.
Psalm 82:1–8
1 God has taken his place in the divine council;
in the midst of the gods he holds judgment:2 “How long will you judge unjustly
and show partiality to the wicked? Selah3 Give justice to the weak and the fatherless;
maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute.4 Rescue the weak and the needy;
deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”
So we see that for some reason, God has given some of these members from his divine council a responsibility to rule over mankind on earth. Where did this come from? Why would God do such a thing? Isn’t God alone the judge of all the earth? And why is he blaming failure to rule on divine beings? Does that make them fallen angels?
To answer those questions, we need to go back to the beginning. Not Genesis 1, but rather, the beginning of the allotment of the nations to the gods. Back to the Tower of Babel. But rather than going straight to Genesis 11, that tells the story of Babel, we need to read what Moses reveals about Babel in Deuteronomy 32… Continue reading