This little psalm tucked away is not one you hear about very often, but it was brought to my attention first a couple years ago when I was in an Old Testament class talking about how the Hebrew people viewed the so-called "spiritual realm." The NIV translation adds the quotation marks around the word "gods" as an interpretive decision, but Hebrew has no quotation marks or anything that would denote that Asaph meant so-called or anything like it. And that little fact makes this passage fascinating. Is the psalm talking about some kind of spiritual being that has some kind of power in the world? Sometimes, the word for gods also denoted angels. God could be summoning the angels, including the fallen ones, in this passage. Some of these heavenly beings may have been worshiped as gods in different cultures. This passage could be talking about kings, since many theologies of kingship in the Old Testament held that the kings (and prophets and priests) had basically one foot into heaven already. All three of these options are possible. There is more mystery to the heavens than our theologies often give credit for.
However, the charge is the same if you are talking to royalty, Zeus or some kind of angel- God is Just. And the voices of power, whether or earth or of heaven, wish to drown out the voices of the oppressed, the hurting, the weak. And God, as a good friend of mine put it, is good at delegating. Certain responsibilities have been granted to creation. For example, we were given the responsibility by God to take care of creation and to make disciples of all nations. The responsibility to love our neighbors and to defend them also can fall to us in any situations where we have power. Ultimately, though, we can be glad that God holds the cause of the defenseless and is a rescuer.
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