Albert Barnes Commentary Psalms 82:7

"Nevertheless ye shall die like men, And fall like one of the princes." — Psalms 82:7 (ASV)

But ye shall die like men. You are mortal, like other people. This fact you have forgotten. You have been lifted up with pride, as if you were in fact more exalted than other people, as if you were not subject to the law which consigns all people to the grave.

An ancient monarch directed his servant to address him each morning with these words: “Remember, sire, that you are mortal.” No more beneficial truth can be impressed on the minds of the rich and the great than that they are, in this respect, like other people—like the poorest, the humblest of the race: that they will die under similar forms of disease; that they will experience the same pain; that all that is fearful in death will be their portion as well as that of the most obscure; and that in the grave, with whatever pomp and splendor they descend to it, or however magnificent the monument that may be raised over the spot where they lie, there will be the same offensive and repulsive process of decay that occurs in the most humble grave in the country churchyard. Why, then—oh, why—should anyone be proud?

And fall like one of the princes. And die as one of the princes. The idea in the word "fall" is, perhaps, that they would die by the hand of violence—or be cut down, as princes often are, for example, in battle. The use of the word "princes" here denotes that they would die as other persons of exalted rank do; that is, that they were mortal as all people, high and low, are—as common people are, and as princes are. Though they had names—אל ('Êl) and אלהים ('Elohiym)—that suggested the idea of divinity, yet such appellations did not make any real change in their condition as people, and as subject to the ordinary laws under which people live. Whatever name they bore, it did not afford any security against death.