The Bible Didn’t Get Weird. We Started Skipping Pages.

Some of us say we take the Bible seriously—right up until it says something that does not fit on the church bulletin.

Then we explain it away, hurry past it, or hand it to the guy who owns a Hebrew dictionary.

Psalm 82 is one of those passages. God stands in an assembly. Other figures are called gods. Judgment follows. If your first instinct is to say, “That cannot mean what it sounds like,” good. Now slow down long enough to ask why.

A difficult passage is not a threat to Scripture. It may be a threat to how small we have made it.

Biblical scholar Michael Heiser made a serious case for reading these scenes within their ancient setting. His work deserves more than a nervous dismissal. It also deserves more than a fan club. Neither panic nor applause is a substitute for following an argument.

Start with the psalm, not the podcast

Read all eight verses of Psalm 82. God confronts unjust judgment and favoritism toward the wicked. The psalm calls for justice for those who lack power. Its conclusion asks God to judge the earth.

Before we build a map of the unseen world, notice the charge being brought: power has failed the people it should protect.

That moral concern does not settle who the figures are. It does tell us what we cannot afford to miss while arguing about them.

Heiser reads the council members as heavenly beings rather than human rulers. His scholarly essay connects Psalm 82 with passages such as Psalm 89 and Job 1, and compares their language with ancient Near Eastern council imagery. In his reading, Israel’s God remains supreme; a heavenly assembly does not make its members equal to God. Read Heiser’s argument.

That is a position to examine, not a permission slip to label every new theory “what the Bible really says.”

The alternative is not automatically stupidity

A human reading has a long history. Augustine, for example, understood the figures in this psalm as people, not heavenly creatures. His exposition connects the judgment with human pride and injustice. That gives us a real historical alternative, not a straw man assembled so we can knock it over. Read Augustine’s exposition.

The human reading takes the commands about unjust judgment seriously: these sound like the failures of earthly authorities. The heavenly reading asks why these figures are sentenced to die like human beings if they already are simply humans, and weighs the scene beside other heavenly assemblies.

Both observations deserve an answer. Neither should be replaced with “my teacher says.”

Augustine’s age does not make him automatically right. Heiser’s knowledge of ancient languages does not make every part of his synthesis untouchable. A source can illuminate one question without settling every question we bring to it.

And when reading ancient Christian writers, we should not carry their hostility toward Jewish people into our own speech. We can learn from a historical interpretation without adopting every judgment around it. The people of a tradition are never our target practice.

Three things that are not the same thing

The text: What words and actions are actually in the passage?

The argument: What does grammar, context or historical comparison suggest those words mean?

The system: What larger picture do we build by joining this passage to others?

Confusing those levels is how a helpful teacher becomes a second Bible without anybody holding a vote.

Take a pencil. Write one claim from an interpretation you find persuasive. Can you point to the verse? If the claim depends on another passage, name it. If it depends on a scholarly judgment, name that too. If there is a gap in the argument, leave the gap visible.

That is not unbelief. That is refusing to put words in God’s mouth because they make our explanation smoother.

Wonder does not require a conspiracy hobby

I am not asking you to make the supernatural harmless enough for a modern living room. Scripture has an unseen world. The Christian story includes realities we do not control.

But fascination can become its own appetite. We start with a passage and end up certain that we have identified the hidden spiritual cause of every difficult person, national event or personal setback.

The leap is not made safer by saying it loudly.

If your map of the unseen world makes you suspicious of every neighbor, check the map before you condemn the neighborhood.

That is my pastoral application, not a claim that Heiser taught every excess people attach to his work. Let a writer answer for what the writer actually said. Let us answer for what we do with it.

Read the strange parts. Then do the plain parts.

The next time Psalm 82 sparks a debate about the council, keep reading until you reach its concern for people being denied justice. There is room for deep study and a practical question in the same afternoon.

Who lacks a voice near you? Who is being dismissed because listening would be inconvenient? Is there a child who needs patient help reading, a family trying to find stable housing, or a neighbor who needs a useful connection rather than an impressive speech?

We do not need to settle every heavenly detail before practicing earthly kindness.

And no, that does not mean doctrine is disposable. It means doctrine should do more than decorate our arguments. The point of studying God is not to become the most interesting person in the room. It is to become more faithful to the One we are studying.

Bring your questions. Bring your Bible. Leave the smug grin at home. None of us has enough light to justify looking down on everybody else.

Bridge Builder Reflection

• What does the passage say, and what is your preferred interpreter adding as a reasoned conclusion?
• Could you explain the competing reading fairly before answering it?
• What would Christlike faith, hope, love, kindness, humility and practical action look like here?

Don’t just read. Build the bridge.

Read Psalm 82 with one person who sees it differently. Agree on one question worth studying and one act of care worth doing. Deep theology and dirty hands do not have to be strangers.

BridgeBuilderBlog.com

Sources / further reading

• Michael S. Heiser, The Divine Council, primary scholarly essay, rechecked October 29, 2026. Summary of his claims is intentionally limited; this article is not an endorsement of his full synthesis.
• Augustine, Exposition on Psalm 82, especially opening sections, rechecked October 29, 2026. Numbering varies across traditions; this is the psalm beginning with God standing in the assembly. Historical perspective is not presented as consensus.
• Psalm 82; Psalm 89:5–7; Job 1. Scripture is paraphrased, not quoted. Ethical applications are the author’s interpretation.

Faith, hope, and love in action through Christ and kindness.