John Calvin Commentary Psalms 82:6

"I said, Ye are gods, And all of you sons of the Most High." — Psalms 82:6 (ASV)

I have said, You are gods. God has invested judges with a sacred character and title. The prophet concedes this, but at the same time, he shows that this will offer no support or protection to wicked judges. He does not introduce them as speaking of the dignity of their office. Instead, anticipating the style of reasoning they would be inclined to adopt, he replies, “If you appeal to your dignity as an argument to shield you, this boasting will be of no use to you; indeed, you are deceiving yourselves by your foolish confidence, for God, in appointing you his substitutes, has not divested himself of his own sovereignty as supreme ruler.

Again, he would have you remember your own frailty as a means of stirring you to carry out with fear and trembling the office entrusted to you.” This verse may also be viewed as addressed by God himself to rulers, intimating that, in addition to investing them with authority, he has bestowed upon them his name.

This interpretation seems to agree with the language of Christ in John 10:34, where he speaks of those as called gods to whom the word of God came. The passage, however, may be appropriately interpreted as follows: I grant that you are gods, and the sons of the Most High. But this does not materially alter the meaning.

The point is simply to teach that the dignity with which judges are invested can offer no excuse or plea for them to escape the punishment their wickedness deserves. The government of the world has been committed to them with the clear understanding that they themselves must also one day appear at the judgment seat of heaven to give an account.

The dignity, therefore, with which they are invested is only temporary and will pass away with the fashion of this world. Accordingly, it is added in the 7th verse, But you shall die as men. You are armed with power, as if to say, to govern the world; but you have not for that reason ceased to be men, and so you are still subject to mortality.

The last clause of the verse is translated by some commentators, You shall fall like one of the princes; but in my opinion, this is incorrect. They think that it contains a threat of the violent death that would happen to these unrighteous judges, corresponding to the sentiment of these lines from a pagan poet:—

“Ad generum Cereris sine caede et sanguine pauci,
Descendunt reges, et sicca morte tyranni.”

“Few kings and tyrants go down to Pluto, the son-in-law of Ceres, without being put to a violent death, before they have completed the ordinary term allotted to mortal life.” That translation is forced and not what the words naturally suggest; I have no doubt that princes are here compared to the obscure and common people.

The word one signifies any of the common people. Forgetting themselves to be men, the great ones of the earth may flatter themselves with illusory hopes of immortality, but they are here taught that they will be forced to face death just as other men are. Christ, to rebut the slander with which the Pharisees charged him, quoted this text (John 10:34–35):

Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, You are gods’? If he called them gods to whom the word of God came—and Scripture cannot be broken—do you say of him whom the Father has sanctified and sent into the world, ‘You blaspheme,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’?”

By these words, Christ did not mean to place himself in the same category as judges. Instead, he argues from the lesser to the greater: if the name of God is applied to God’s officers, it much more appropriately belongs to his only begotten Son, who is the express image of the Father, in whom the Father’s majesty shines, and in whom the whole fullness of the Godhead dwells.