Psalms 82:6

We have here, I. Earthly gods abased and brought down, Psa 82:6, Psa 82:7. The dignity of their character is acknowledged (Psa 82:6): I have said, You are gods. They have been honoured with the name and title of gods. God himself called them so in the statute against treasonable words Exo 22:28, Thou shalt not revile the gods. And, if they have this style from the fountain of honour, who can dispute it? But what is man, that he should be thus magnified? He called them gods because unto them the word of God came, so our Saviour expounds it (Joh 10:35); they had a commission from God, and were delegated and appointed by him to be the shields of the earth, the conservators of the public peace, and revengers to execute wrath upon those that disturb it, Rom 13:4. All of them are in this sense children of the Most High. God has put some of his honour upon them, and employs them in his providential government of the world, as David made his sons chief rulers. Or, "Because I said, You are gods, you have carried the honour further than was intended and have imagined yourselves to be the children of the Most High," as the king of Babylon (Isa 14:14), I will be like the Most High, and the king of Tyre (Eze 28:2), Thou hast set thy heart as the heart of God. It is a hard thing for men to have so much honour put upon them by the hand of God, and so much honour paid them, as ought to be by the children of men, and not to be proud of it and puffed up with it, and so to think of themselves above what is meet. But here follows a mortifying consideration: You shall die like men. This may be taken either, 1. As the punishment of bad magistrates, such as judged unjustly, and by their misrule put the foundations of the earth out of course. God will reckon with them, and will cut them off in…

82:6-7 The gods (see study notes on 29:1-2; 58:1), like mere mortals, cannot escape the judgment common to human rulers. Jesus quoted from this passage in John 10:34.