Do you indeed decree what is right, you gods?
Do you judge the children of man uprightly?
No, in your hearts you devise wrongs;
your hands deal out violence on earth.
The wicked are estranged from the womb;
they go astray from birth, speaking lies.
They have venom like the venom of a serpent,
like the deaf adder that stops its ear,
so that it does not hear the voice of charmers
or of the cunning enchanter.
Comment: Your Sunday School teacher might well have taught you that there is only one God. But that is not what the Bible teaches! Think hard – do you remember Paul saying ‘For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places.’ Eph 6:12. Maybe you remember how the book of Job starts? And you may remember the Baals of the OT and ‘Dagon’ of the Philistines and ‘Molech’ that monster god to whom people burnt their children. The ‘you’ at the beginning isn’t talking to humanity but to the ‘gods’ who rule evilly over their territories and whom the author is addressing. A moment’s thought makes us remember that the author, David, is carefully taking us back to the early Genesis chapters and the Devil, arch-enemy of God, somehow using a venomous snake to spew his poisonous thoughts and ‘judgements’ into the ears of Eve. Our world leaders are right when they cause us to think of other creatures alive in the Universe but they are not focusing on the correct places.
Prayer: Help us to see how complex your Creation is, O Supreme One!
As I read it! 