Psalm 82 – God Demands Justice from Justices

Aug 23, 2026 | Pastor's Blog, Psalms

Timeless Biblical Truth.

Believers earnestly appeal to the LORD, the Sovereign Judge of the whole earth, to stop injustice in the world and establish universal righteousness.

  1. God is prepared to judge those who judge on His behalf (1).
  2. God condemns judges who pervert justice and create moral chaos (2-7).
    1. God indicts blind judges who pervert justice and create disorder (2-5).
    2. God sentences unjust judges to death despite their privileged position (6-7).
  3. Believers encourage God to judge the earth because all the nations belong to Him (8).
“ . . . to any young man or woman eaten with ambition to become a writer, I should advise first of all—‘Know your Bible.’ Ibsen said his chief reading was always in the Bible: ‘it is so strong and mighty.’ Tolstoi knew the Scriptures like Timothy; it is quite impossible to read Dostoevsky’s novels . . . without knowing the Bible. For four years in the Siberian prison, the New Testament was his most intimate friend. His greatest stories are really commentaries. Andreev, giving a list of the books that had influenced him the most, put the Bible first. Kipling’s finest poem, the Recessional, is almost as close a paraphrase of Scripture as the hymn Nearer, my God, to Thee, which is a verse-translation of a passage in the twenty-eighth chapter of Genesis.” William Lyon Phelps, Reading the Bible, p. 18. (Phelps was a professor of English at Yale for over 30 years.)

Questions for Second Milers

  1. Contrast God’s justice with the judgments of Israel’s rulers and judges.
  2. What is the charge? The command?
  3. To whom have they shown partiality (cf. Lev 19:15)?
  4. Why are the cases of the poor and weak often neglected?
  5. What honor is inherent in the office of judge?
  6. How will God’s kingdom be established?
  7. Are you concerned enough about injustice to call on God to judge the earth or do you just talk about it with other people?
  8. How does your attitude toward injustice reveal your concept of God?
  9. What area of injustice do you think God wants you to be concerned about?
  10. Give your own short title to this psalm.

“Unless your perceptions are sharpened by the constant exercise of the power of observation you see nothing. ‘It is our noticing them that puts things in a room,’ says Marcel Proust, ‘our growing used to them takes them away again.’” Holbrook Jackson, The Reading of Books, p. 108.

“The primary effect of reading is awakening, not informing. . . Unless in some way or at some time words, sentences, or books explode thus beneficently and creatively, not only revealing life but showing us how to live, reading is a waste of time.” Holbrook Jackson: The Reading of Books, p. 76.

The Bible Church of the Lakes