The rulers and judges of the earth are challenged, as again in Psalm 82. But they are here called “sons of men” (see John 5:2727And hath given him authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of man. (John 5:27)); but there, “gods.”
Under their hand, the world is left in all its native wickedness. The evil state of it is awfully described; and the Prophet calls solemnly for judgment upon them.
And there is this also set forth in the Psalm—the ground of the triumph of the righteous when the judgment of the world comes. We have that triumph itself, for instance, in Isaiah 30:32,32And in every place where the grounded staff shall pass, which the Lord shall lay upon him, it shall be with tabrets and harps: and in battles of shaking will he fight with it. (Isaiah 30:32) and in Revelation 19:11And after these things I heard a great voice of much people in heaven, saying, Alleluia; Salvation, and glory, and honor, and power, unto the Lord our God: (Revelation 19:1). But here we have the ground or principle of all that righteous joy in the judgment of God. “The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance: he shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked, so that a man shall say, Verily there is a reward for the righteous: verily He is a God that judgeth in the earth.” The saint could not as yet, in this present dispensation, triumph in judgment, because the Lord is publishing His name and praise in grace; but by and by he will learn to triumph in it, because the Lord will vindicate His divine glory by vengeance, and establish His government of “the world to come” by the judgment of “this present world.”
All this is perfect in its season. We now rejoice in the redeeming grace of our kinsman; by and by we shall be able to triumph in the avenging power of the same kinsman. For both belonged to the Redeemer under the law, and both are the ways of our Jesus in their seasons. Revelation 5 shows the saints in the first of these joys or triumphs; Revelation 19 shows them in the second.
This judgment of the earth and its gods or rulers will not, of course, take place till the apostate or willful one of the last days be manifested. So that this Psalm is the utterance of the Spirit of God in the Remnant, and contemplates the same time and circumstances as the preceding ones, as we have seen from Psalm 52.