Psalm 82 depicts God (Elohim) taking his place 'in the divine council,' judging 'in the midst of the gods (elohim)': 'I say, You are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless, you shall die like mortals, and fall like any prince.' This is offered as one of the clearest, least ambiguous polytheism texts in the Hebrew Bible — multiple beings called elohim, exercising real divine authority over the nations, until judicially stripped of god-status.

This text deserves to be engaged at full depth rather than minimized; it is a genuinely hard case, and there are two serious, live scholarly readings, both compatible with monotheism. **Reading A — human rulers.** 'Elohim' can denote human judges/magistrates functioning in a quasi-divine judicial office (cf. Exodus 21:6; 22:8-9, where 'elohim' plausibly means human judges adjudicating before God). On this reading, Psalm 82 is a blistering prophetic indictment of corrupt human power ('judge the weak and the orphan... they have neither knowledge nor understanding, they walk in darkness,' vv. 3-5) — human rulers called 'gods' by courtesy of their God-derived office are sentenced to die 'like mortals' precisely BECAUSE they are mortals who have abused a borrowed divine authority. This is the reading Jesus himself invokes in John 10:34-36, quoting Psalm 82:6 ('I said, you are gods') in an a fortiori defense of his own claim to divine sonship. **Reading B — real subordinate spiritual beings.** Michael Heiser (*The Unseen Realm*) and, increasingly, mainstream critical scholarship (e.g. Mark S. Smith, *The Origins of Biblical Monotheism*) read the elohim as genuine members of Yahweh's divine council — the same beings as Deuteronomy 32:8's 'sons of God' — delegated real authority over the nations (cf. Deut 4:19-20, where YHWH 'allotted' the heavenly bodies/host to the nations while reserving Israel directly) and judged for abusing it. The decisive move is v. 7: being sentenced to 'die like mortals' strips them of the one attribute — deathlessness — that would make them genuine ontological rivals to God. A 'god' who can be tried, sentenced, and made mortal by another being is not a god in the relevant, ultimate sense; he is a creature. Both readings converge on the same structural point, which is why either is compatible with monotheism: YHWH ALONE possesses underived, unrivaled judicial authority OVER the elohim — human or spiritual. He prosecutes, sentences, and strips them; they never judge him. The psalm's own frame makes this explicit — it opens with God PRESIDING as judge (v. 1) and closes with a petition for God alone to 'inherit all the nations' (v. 8), which is the psalm's entire point, not a datum in tension with it. This also fits the term's wider range elsewhere: elohim is used of a human king (Ps 45:6), of Moses relative to Pharaoh (Exod 7:1), and even of a departed human spirit (1 Sam 28:13) — the word tracks REALM OF EXISTENCE (the non-ordinary/spiritual sphere generally), not a claim of parity with YHWH.

Scripture presents a coherent, unified metaphysical picture: one uncreated, necessary, self-existent being ('I AM WHO I AM,' Exod 3:14) surrounded by a created, contingent, ontologically derivative host of spiritual and human authorities who owe their existence and any delegated authority entirely to him and remain answerable to him in judgment (Ps 82; Job 1-2; Col 1:16 — 'in him all things were created... whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers'). This is not polytheism with extra steps; it is monotheism WITH a populated, subordinate administration — analogous to a human monarch's court of appointed ministers who exercise real but entirely derivative and revocable authority.