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Boker Tov! Here at Mishkan Katan, we are continuing with our study of the Psalms. Last week, I over planned and therefore did not quite finish my exposition of Psalm 81. So, we are going to resume our studies together this morning by finishing up Psalm 81, starting in verse 11 and then by taking a close look at Psalm 82.
Let’s read verses 11-16, the end of the psalm.
(11) “But my people did not listen to my voice;
Isra’el would have none of me.
(12) So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts,
to live by their own plans.
(13) How I wish my people would listen to me,
that Isra’el would live by my ways!
(14) I would quickly subdue their enemies
and turn my hand against their foes.
(15) Those who hate Adonai would cringe before him,
while [Isra’el’s] time would last forever.
(16) They would be fed with the finest wheat,
and I would satisfy you with honey from the rocks.”
Verse 11 is one of the saddest verses in all Scripture. The extent to which Hashem had wooed the Hebrew nation and loved her tenderly is extraordinary. Yet, generation after generation, the people pledged their devotions and then turned their backs on Him.
Like earlier, in verse 8, the people did not listen to Hashem’s voice. When God began to audibly deliver the 10 Commandments, He only got as far as the first two, when the people begged Moses to be the intermediator between Hashem and them. They said they were unable to bear it. The sages say that this incident in Exodus 20:19 is the first one to which verses 8 and 11 refer.
Verse 12 lists the consequences of reprobate behavior, even in our lives. When even we turn away from the voice of Hashem, despite knowing His will, He at times will give us over to follow our own desires and to reap our own tragic consequences.
Verses 13 and 14 show how blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the nation who walks in His ways. The greatest days of the USA were those when the majority of the people lived according to the dictates of the Old and New Testaments. Most people alive today have never lived in such days, because today idolatry and rebellion are rampant.
Verse 15 is very different in the ArtScroll translation. That translation says, “Those who hate Hashem lie to Him - - so their destiny is eternal.” This verse is referring to those enemies and foes of the previous verse. They persecute and attack Israel because they hate Hashem, and that does not end well for those gentile nations, as Scriptures demonstrates both in history and in prophecy for the future days to come.
The last verse refers to spiritual Israel, all the beloved of Hashem. When our spiritual ancestors were in the wilderness, were they not fed with manna, which the sages said was even more delicious and nutritious than the finest wheat, the cream of the wheat? Similarly, Hashem provided them with the purest water, from Miriam’s well, The Rock that moved and traveled with the company of Hashem’s beloved children? The sages say that water was sweeter than honey!
Some sages, most notably Rashi, Ibn Ezra, Radak and Rokeach, liken this last verse of the psalm to Deuteronomy 32:13, which says, “He made him suck honey out of the stone, and oil out of the hard rock.” This last verse, with its reference to honey, is a fitting conclusion to this psalm, with its Rosh Hashanah references and overtones, because on Rosh Hashanah we pray for a sweet and pleasant year, and we eat fruit with honey, to symbolize that sweetness.
Hashem’s supplies are inexhaustible, today until forever! He never fails to meet our deepest needs.
Baruch Hashem!
My plan is to do a very deep dive of this Psalm 82, aspects of which have been largely ignored by much of the Christian church.
And, so, in that light, I want to invite you to allow your filter to be broken a bit this morning. We all view Scripture through some sort of filter, which was formed in our earlier years, by our previous encounters with Scripture and more accurately, with Bible teachers. We were told by them very often what filters to place over the Scriptures, and we did so, trusting that they knew more about the Bible than we did. It’s not a horrible plan, but it assumes that their own filters were correctly applied as well. These filters screen out either unpleasant or inconvenient parts of the Bible. Judaism has done it also, which is why, for example, most Jews have never read Isaiah 53. So, all I am asking is that you have an open mind to what I am going to share with you today via Psalm 82, since for many of you it is going to be somewhat startling information.
The psalm’s superscription simply says that it is a psalm of Asaph. We have one more of Asaph’s psalms to study and that will be Psalm 83, but I don’t think we will get to that one today. There is an awful lot to consider and marvel at in Psalm 82. By the way, Psalm 82 IS quoted in the New Testament, in John 10:34.
The focus of this psalm is the judicial system of Hashem. It alludes to His divine council of “elohim” (gods) and also to the judicial system revealed in the Torah. The psalm forcefully condemns those who seek to overturn, falsify or abrogate Hashem’s law.
Psalm 82 has been designated by the rabbis (Talmud’s Rosh Hashanah 32a) as the Song of the Day for the third day of the week. That would be Tuesday on the Western calendar. Genesis 1:9 tells us that on the third day of Creation, the Divine Mysterious Majesty parted the waters, gathered them up and caused dry land to appear. In so doing, he established boundaries for the forces of nature, making them subject to His laws. The continued existence of Earth depends on their adherence to His equity and justice, to stay within their proper boundaries. Similarly, when mankind disregards Hashem’s moral laws, He often responds by unleashing forces of nature, relaxing those boundaries to bring judgment on the earth. The most well-known example of this occurs in Genesis 6, where the Lord God brings the worldwide cataclysm known as The Great Flood, because evil had proliferated in and on the Earth to the point that “it was only evil, continually”. He caused the waters to disregard their boundaries and fill the earth, cover it, with waters.
On the third day of Creation, additionally, Hashem caused the Earth to bring forth (dahSHAH in the Hebrew) vegetation (Gen. 1:12). The three root letters of dahSHAH are dalet, shin and aleph. These three letters are the first letters of din (justice), shalom (peace/wholeness) and emet (truth) - - the three virtues/pillars that allow the world to endure. Just as vegetation represented fertility in the natural world, these characteristics represent the goodness and fruitfulness in human civilization. When these 3 prevail, human civilization flourishes. When they don’t, the opposite is true.
Before we read this psalm together, it is important to look at a key word, and that is the word elohim. You see this word often in Scripture, if you are reading original Hebrew. When the first letter of the word is capitalized, it always refers to one of the names of Hashem/God. It is a word that is both a singular and a plural.
When you see Elohim (capital E) in Scripture, it is referring to the singular God above all gods, the Hashem of the Scriptures. He is One and Only true God, and He has manifested himself in many forms/ways to humans, since the time that He created them.
Just as Elohim (capital E) indicates that Yahweh is God above all gods, similarly Yeshua as THE Son of God is THE one, unique Son among other sons. Yahweh was not created nor was Yeshua. Some of you will think of John 3:16, and the term “only begotten”. It is an unfortunate translation. The Greek term is “monogenes”, which was thought to be a combo word of “mono” (one or only) and “geneo”, which means to beget or to bear or to birth. But, later, Greek scholars discovered that the second half of the word “monogenes” actually comes from the noun “genus”, which means “class or kind”. Biologists will recognize this word as it is used in the zoological heirarchy. So, “monogenes” means “unique” or “one of a kind”, in this case, one of a kind among the sons of God. Yeshua is THE Son of God, as Yahweh is THE Elohim.
However, in this psalm, if you are looking at it in your copy of the Scriptures, you may also see the word “elohim”, with a lower case “e”. That is a different meaning. When you see the word with a lower case “e”, it always refers to a group of “created-by-Hashem,” supernatural beings, a divine heirarchy featuring as the following:
1. False gods and goddesses of the heathen (Judges 11:24, 1 Kings 11:33). Yes, those characters were not mere statues or idols. They were backed up by and represented actual spiritual beings of the supernatural world. Even the heathen knew they were not worshipping a block of wood. They believed that the spirit of the god inhabited the object.
2. The Divine Council of Yahweh (more about that momentarily) (Psalm 82: 1, 6)
3. Demons (also called “shedim”, in Hebrew) (Deut. 32:17)
4. Angels, messengers, in general.
Let’s read the psalm, all of it, and then we will break it down. Follow along, please, in your copy of the Scriptures, and let’s really consider what we are reading here.
A psalm of Asaf:
(1) Elohim [God] stands in the divine assembly;
there with the elohim [judges], he judges:
2 “How long will you go on judging unfairly,
favoring the wicked? (Selah)
3 Give justice to the weak and fatherless!
Uphold the rights of the wretched and poor!
4 Rescue the destitute and needy;
deliver them from the power of the wicked!”
5 They don’t know, they don’t understand,
they wander about in darkness;
meanwhile, all the foundations of the earth
are being undermined.
6 “My decree is: ‘You are elohim [gods, judges],
sons of the Most High all of you.
7 Nevertheless, you will die like mortals;
like any prince, you will fall.’”
8 Rise up, Elohim, and judge the earth;
for all the nations are yours.
Now, the position of some Bible scholars has been, for centuries, to write off this psalm as literary allegory, or something less than a literal rendering of the words. The reason there is a tendency to this is that those scholars are leery of the implications a literal reading would yield. That’s one of those filters I was speaking of earlier. What is this psalm saying, if you read it literally?
First of all, it is saying that the Supreme Elohim, Hashem, the One and Only, has a divine council/assembly of “elohim”, “sons of God”, “gods”, judges, watchers, elders: immortal spiritual beings that go by one or more of these names.
Secondly, this council assists Hashem in the administration of and the judgement of the nations of the earth. Deut. 32:8-9
In verse 2, Hashem accuses at least some of the council of judging the nations of the earth unfairly, giving preference to the wicked. He asks them how long they are going to continue to do this? (Obviously, Hashem is not a fan of this unfair judgment.)
In verses 3 and 4, Hashem admonishes the divine council to advocate for the fatherless, the poor, the needy, the wretched, the weak and to deliver them from the hands of the wicked.
In verse 5 he describes such unfortunate and helpless humans, while saying that these divine council members’ evil actions are undermining the foundations of the earth.
In verses 6 and 7 Hashem is pronouncing judgment upon the unrighteous sons of God on the divine council. He is saying that their sinful actions have caused them to lose their immortality and that they will die Iike mortals.
And finally, in verse 8, Hashem admonishes the rest of the council to judge their assigned nations of the earth and to do it righteously.
A literal translation of this psalm will make some of you quite nervous; let’s just say it. Some of you, your heads are exploding. But, before you start writing me off as a heretic, let me show you some other places we see the divine council operating, as mentioned in Scripture.
Take a look at Daniel chapter 4. In verse 17 there, we read about how Nebuchadnezzar is going to be reduced to a form of mental/spiritual illness where he reverts to living like a beast of the field. Verse 17 says that this was decreed by the divine council. I’m reading, as usual, from the CJB translation.
(17) “‘“This order is issued by the watchers,
the sentence is announced by the holy ones,
so that all who live may know
that the Most High rules the human kingdom,
that he gives it to whomever he wishes
and can raise up over it the lowliest of mortals.”
Again, like in Psalm 82, this verse makes it plain that Hashem is Supreme Ruler over all, but that the divine council, the holy ones, the watchers, are given some judicial power in the human realm, all under Hashem’s sovereignty, of course.
While you are there in Daniel, look at chapter 7, verse 10. The text says, “the court sat in judgment, and the books were opened”. It’s not talking about Judge Judy’s court, folks. Nor is it talking about some allegorical court. More about this passage and scene in a moment.
For now though, let’s look at 1 Kings 22:19-22. When you have turned there, look at those verses.
19 Mikhay’hu continued: “Therefore hear the word of Adonai. I saw Adonai sitting on his throne with the whole army of heaven standing by him on his right and on his left. 20 Adonai asked, ‘Who will entice Ach’av to go up to his death at Ramot-Gil‘ad?’ One of them said, ‘Do it this way,’ and another, ‘Do it that way.’ 21 Then a spirit stepped up, stood in front of Adonai and said, ‘I will entice him.’ 22 Adonai asked, ‘How?’ and he answered, ‘I will go and be a deceiving spirit in the mouths of all his prophets.’ Adonai said, ‘You will succeed in enticing him. Go, and do it.’
Through the little-known prophet Michaiah, we are given a glimpse into the courts of Heaven. Here we have a meeting of the divine council with Hashem. Hashem had previously plainly decided at Ramoth-Gilead that it was time for Ahab to die, but He did not at that time decree the method. Here, He consults His divine council as to how this should be accomplished. The council debates, and a spirit comes up with an idea, which is then presented to Hashem. Hashem approves of the method and says, essentially, “go and get it done”.
Now, when you go back and re-read the Creation story, where Hashem proclaims, “Let US make mankind in our own image…” that sort of changes things a bit, doesn’t it? As Protestants, we have been taught that the Father, the Son (John chapter 1) and the Ruach HaKodesh, the Holy Spirit, were all present at Creation. I’m not a strict Trinitarian; I believe that all manifestations/revelations of Hashem were present, including those just mentioned, as well as members of the Divine Council being present. The reason I believe Scripture teaches this, other than the passage I just read, is found in the book of Job.
The ancient book of Job, arguably the oldest book of the Bible, records additional information about the Creation in Job 38:4-7. Here, Hashem is answering Job.
4 “Where were you when I founded the earth?
Tell me, if you know so much.
5 Do you know who determined its dimensions
or who stretched the measuring line across it?
6 On what were its bases sunk,
or who laid its cornerstone,
7 when the morning stars sang together,
and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
Who could have been referred to here? The Divine Council? Very likely so.
You see, if you read Scripture without preconceptions, it is easy to see that in God’s spirit world there are hierarchies of responsibility and authority and power, all operating under the sovereign will of The One, of Hashem, Father Yahweh. This is true of both the righteous group of spiritual beings, as well as the unrighteous, mentioned in the book of ✝️Ephesians 6:12 KJV
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
This information also changes how you look at Scriptures telling about the fall of HaSatan and 1/3 of the angelic host. What you are reading in Psalm 81:2 is a judgment of certain council members. It is a condemnation of them, hands-down. Did this event we read about in Psalm 82 take place prior to HaSatan’s rebellion? Or was it linked to it? We don’t know. But, it is not far-fetched to deduce that it could have been related.
Where else do we see references to the Divine Council?
Let’s take a look at Psalm 89, which we will be studying in just a few weeks. We are going to look ahead there, at this Psalm written by a guy named Eitan the Ezrachi (lest you are starting to think Asaph was just a one-off whack-job). Look at verses 5-7 of this psalm.
(5) Let the heavens praise your wonders, Adonai,
your faithfulness in the assembly of the angels.
(6) For who in the skies can be compared with Adonai?
Which of these gods can rival Adonai,
(7) a God dreaded in the great assembly of the holy ones
and feared by all around him?
While some theologians consistently try to craft these beings as humans, it just does not hold up to even the slightest bit of scrutiny. I could at this point, go off on a huge tangent about Genesis 6, particularly Genesis 6:4 and the Sethite explanation. But, I will refrain from doing that as it would take us severely off-track.
James, in 1:7, refers to Hashem as the “Father of Lights”, a phrase which reflects (if you’ll pardon the pun) the ANE belief that the celestial stars were literal heavenly beings. Many stars “moved” or appeared to move, from the earthly vantage point. To the ancients, that was a sign of life. That is where this idea we just read about in Job 38 came from. The “morning stars” sang for joy. Remember?
There’s also Job 1:6 and 2:1, where “the sons of God came to present themselves before Hashem.”
Yet another place we see the divine council is in Ezekiel 1:26-27. Here we see the “capital E” Elohim seated on His throne. However, there are other thrones in Heaven. Notice it says, “thrones were set up”. Those mark the presence of the divine council. What was the purpose of this convening of the council? We read further in chapter 1 of Ezekiel that the council had been summoned to decide the fate of the “beasts”, which represent nations, empires. In verses 11 and 12, for example, the decision of the council is/was to slay the fourth beast.
Let me digress here for a moment and return to Daniel 7, where we see similar imagery to what we see in Ezekiel 1. The reason I want to go back here is to touch on this crucial passage that formed the ancient Jewish doctrine of the two powers. Until the first advent of Yeshua, Judaism taught of a visible Yahweh and an invisible Yahweh. After Yeshua, because that true, I might add, doctrine supported the revolutionary gospel of Yeshua, it became declared heretical by the Rabbis. You can see why. Most Christians have never heard of this doctrinal teaching of Judaism, nor have most Jews, frankly, since it was declared to be a heresy in the first century.
Yet, we see Yahweh manifesting Himself in both invisible and visible ways throughout the Tanakh, the Old Testament. Those of you who have been studying with me for quite some time will remember that I did a study on nearly 30 appearances of visible Yahweh in the Tanakh. And, that was a study that did not even deal with all of Yahweh’s visible appearances/manifestations! With that duality of divinity in mind, let’s read Daniel 7:13-14.
13 “I kept watching the night visions,
when I saw, coming with the clouds of heaven,
someone like a son of man.
He approached the Ancient One
and was led into his presence.
14 To him was given rulership,
glory and a kingdom,
so that all peoples, nations and languages
should serve him.
His rulership is an eternal rulership
that will not pass away;
and his kingdom is one
that will never be destroyed.
These are obviously not the same being. The Ancient of Days is the God of Israel, Hashem. And, “the one like a son of man” are different characters. The phrase “son of man” as it used throughout Scripture indicates a someone who is a human being. Here, the being is described as “appearing human”. Yet, He is described in strongly Messianic terms. The everlasting kingship over all the earth was to belong only to the son of David, the Messiah. This passage teaches us that the ultimate son of David, the Messianic King will be both deity “the rider of the clouds” AND human “son of man”, which is precisely what we see revealed in the New Testament. So, we have two Yahweh figures in this scene, two manifestations of Hashem.
This is not the only place in Scripture where we find Hashem manifesting Himself riding on clouds. Check out these scriptures, although we don’t have time to explore them fully today. Deuteronomy 33:26, Psalm 68:32-33, Psalm 104:1-4 and Isaiah 19:1.
One of the pivotal places we see the divine council mentioned is in the very important story of the Tower of Babel, recorded in Genesis 11:1-9. Keep in mind when this story took place, according to Bible scholars some 100-150 years after the Great Flood. Mankind was still located generally in the area where Noah and his sons stepped down off the ark. In fact, Noah and his sons were still alive when the Babel incident occurred. That does not implicate them, as nowhere does Scripture say that ALL mankind was involved in this mutiny. But, consider…this means there was no Abraham born yet. There was no Hebrew nation formed yet. There was no “Israel”. No “sons of Israel” existed at that time.
Start reading with me now, Genesis 11. One more thing before we do, the area referred to here as Shinar is always identified with the land later called Babylon, in the Tanakh, the OT Scriptures. Ok, let’s read now, for real.
11 (S: vii) The whole earth used the same language, the same words. 2 It came about that as they traveled from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shin‘ar and lived there. 3 They said to one another, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them in the fire.” So they had bricks for building-stone and clay for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let’s build ourselves a city with a tower that has its top reaching up into heaven, so that we can make a name for ourselves and not be scattered all over the earth.”
5 Adonai came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. 6 Adonai said, “Look, the people are united, they all have a single language, and see what they’re starting to do! At this rate, nothing they set out to accomplish will be impossible for them! 7 Come, let’s go down and confuse their language, so that they won’t understand each other’s speech.” 8 So from there Adonai scattered them all over the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 For this reason it is called Bavel [confusion] — because there Adonai confused the language of the whole earth, and from there Adonai scattered them all over the earth.
At Babel, the evil Nimrod, a grandson of Noah’s son Ham, and his many followers were trying to bring Heaven down to Earth - - something that Hashem had not approved. They were throwing off the rule of Hashem and substituting for that the making of a name for themselves, self-rule, which idolatry. And, they were judged for it, big time. It is as if Yahweh said, “You don’t want to be ruled by me? Fine. I will appoint you false gods that you nations may worship.”
Now, hold your finger here and let’s look at Deuteronomy 32:8-9 and compare it to what we just read.
“When ‘Elyon gave each nation its heritage,
when he divided the human race,
he assigned the boundaries of peoples
according to Isra’el’s population;
9 but Adonai’s share was his own people,
Ya‘akov his allotted heritage.
Conclusion: at Babel, El Elyon, God Almighty, because of their rebellion, divided the nations of the world into 70 nations, according to the numbers of His own true (at that time future) people. Remember, there was no Hebrew nation at this time! The 70 are listed in a table in Genesis 10. But, this table does not include Jacob’s (Ya’akov’s) own allotted inheritance, Israel.
Some ancient manuscripts translate the Hebrew phase “Benei Yisrael,” at the end of verse 8, as Benai Elohim, which means “sons of God”. The Dead Sea scrolls support that wording and translation. That’s why when you look at Deut. 32:8 in a Bible compendium, such as the online app Bible Hub, and look down through the translations, you’ll see some which say “sons of God”. Who are they? They are the aforementioned Divine Council. Scholars who take a literal reading of the Word of God, then, say that it was at this point in Hashem’s relations with humankind that he assigned members of the Divine Council to the 70 nations. Remember Daniel’s supernatural “Prince of Persia”, who warred with the archangel Michael for 40 days, preventing Michael from coming to answer Daniel’s prayer right away? Cosmic Geography …
Does this mean that Hashem was “writing off” the Gentile nations of the world forever? Of course not! About 5 generations after the Babel rebellion, Hashem called Abram, a descendant of Shem, out of the land of the Chaldeans, Mesopotamia. The covenant Hashem initiated with Abram, later called Abraham, included the theology Paul preached in Acts 17 - - that the disinherited nations would be drawn back to Hashem, reclaimed by Him, through the work of His Son. The nation of Israel, Abraham’s descendants, were to be instrumental in that reconciliation.
Why would Hashem need a divine council? We don’t know. We also don’t know why He would want one. The Scriptures do not say. It is His prerogative. The same could be asked of why He created humans. That was His prerogative as well. But, it is clear that He DOES have a divine council, this sort of “heavenly family” which He has, despite the fact that some of them forfeited their exalted heavenly positions.
Again, to reiterate, the Scriptures are quite clear that there are ranks and positions and authorities to the divine beings which populate the heavenly realm. There are angels which are primarily messengers, for instance, although the name means “messenger”. There are the class of beings called seraphim and cherubim. They have very unusual descriptions, in the book of Ezekiel. There are the divine council members. As revealed in Psalm 82, and other places, various elohim have authority over the nations of the earth, for now. Again, I point you to the book of Daniel, chapter 10:16-21, which refers to the Prince of Persia, a divine being who has been assigned to that earthly nation.
However, Yahweh, through His Son, Yeshua, WILL one day once again be the ruler of all nations. There will be no more lesser elohim assigned to the 70 nations of the earth. We righteous ones, the believers in Yeshua, as well as those righteous ones from the creation of Adam and forward, are the true Israel, and we will, in the end of days (see Rev. 21), inherit the rule of all nations, alongside Yeshua. We are already-but-not-yet Father Yahweh’s new ruling council on earth. As 1st Corinthians 6:3 proclaims, we will outrank and judge angels. Daniel 12:3 puts it beautifully, and this is why I chose that verse as the anchor verse for my ministry, Resplendent Daughter Ministries. The verse says, “But the righteous will shine like the brightness of the sky above, like the stars, forever and ever.” It’s a fearsome thought.
Because the number 70 is so prominent at the Tower of Babel (the number of nations of the world) of Deuteronomy 32, in the number of rabbinical sages on the Sanhedrin beginning at Sinai, in the number of missionaries Yeshua sent out in Luke 10:1, it is theorized that there could be 70 elders on the Divine Council. This recurring number could indicate that, as God’s kingdom is being re-established on earth, the 70 non-Hebrew nations will eventually be redeemed and reclaimed, a process that began with Yeshua’s ministry and continues on to this day. That number for the Divine Council is just a theory, though.
For another opinion…In the throne room scene of Revelation chapter 5, there are 24 “elders” present. These are likely part of the Divine Council as well. So, the number of these heavenly judges is indeterminate, as far as what we are told in Scripture.
Some of you, if you have not tuned out already, are chalking this teaching up to Old Testament nonsense. What if I told you that the apostle Paul used the passage from Daniel 10 and the verses from Deuteronomy 32 to form the basis of his theology of the unseen world?
Look with me at Acts 17. Here, Paul is preaching in Greece at the Areopagus. In that arena, there were multiple statues to various “gods” and “goddesses”, including one to “the unknown god”. Paul uses this framework to explain Hashem’s plan of salvation, through His One, Unique Son, Yeshua. Look at verse 26 and 27.
26 “From one man he made every nation living on the entire surface of the earth, and he fixed the limits of their territories and the periods when they would flourish. 27 God did this so that people would look for him and perhaps reach out and find him although in fact, he is not far from each one of us,
Paul’s belief in a cosmic-geographical worldview is reflected in his letter to the Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 2:6,8 and also to the Ephesians, chapters 2 and 3 “rulers in heavenly places” and “the ruler of the authority of the air”. He also points to an angelic heirarchy in his use of angelic rankings throughout his writings, terms such as “principalities” (archē), “authorities” (exousia), “powers” (dynamis), “dominions” (kyrios), and “thrones” (thronos), particularly in Ephesians 6.
So, to round things up, because we are almost out of time this morning, what a wonderful and powerful psalm! It teaches us so much about the heavenly realm, if we open our eyes and hearts to see and receive its lessons.
If you are interested in doing a deep dive on this topic, let me recommend to you a book by the late, great Dr. Michael Heiser, called “The Unseen Realm”.
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