Charles Ellicott Commentary Exodus 22:28

"Thou shalt not revile God, nor curse a ruler of thy people." — Exodus 22:28 (ASV)

Thou shalt not revile the gods.— The Septuagint and Vulgate give the passage this sense; and so it was understood, or at any rate expounded, by Philo (De Vita Mosis ii. 26) and Josephus (Antiquitates Judaicae iv. 8, § 10), who boasted that the Jews abstained from reviling the gods of the nations.

But the practice of the most pious Israelites in the best times was different (1 Kings 18:27; Psalms 115:4–8; Psalms 135:15–18; Isaiah 41:29; Isaiah 44:9–20; Jeremiah 10:11–15, and others). The gods of the heathen were uniformly, and with the utmost scorn, “reviled.” It has been suggested that the true meaning of elohim in this place is “judges” (Rosenmüller, Zunz, Herxheimer); but to have that sense, the word requires the article. It is best, therefore, to translate it as “God,” as is done by De Wette, Knobel, Keil, Kalisch, Canon Cook, and others, and to understand the entire passage as intended to connect the sin of cursing a ruler with that of reviling God, the ruler being regarded as God’s representative.