Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. 2 And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. 3 And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.” 5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. 6 And the Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech.” 8 So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. 9 Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth. And from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth. [Gen 11.1-9, ESV]
The story of the Tower of Babel is the third “divine rebellion” in Genesis. The first was the cherubim Diviner’s rebellion in the Garden of Eden; the second was the rebellion of the elohim (or ‘Watchers’) who fathered offspring with human women and promoted dark arts; and the third is the rebellion of the elohim who were placed over the nations whom Yahweh disinherited after the Tower of Babel incident. Anyone who’s been to Sunday School at least once in their life likely knows the story. At this point in time, all the people spoke one language; they decided to build a ‘tower’ (likely a Mesopotamian ziggurat) to reach into heaven; they were consumed with pride and self-love, they were tired of worshiping Yahweh, and they wanted to build a tower that reached into heaven so that they could seize God’s throne for themselves. Because of this, Yahweh ‘dispersed them from there over the face of the earth.’ He confused their languages and scattered them, and the aftershocks was the ‘rising’ of the pagan nations. This story isn’t difficult to grasp, nor is it necessarily interesting to many who have grown up in the church (it’s just more of that ‘old hat’). What is interesting is that the Tower of Babel is addressed elsewhere in scripture, and in these texts we get some fresh angles on what happened after the dispersion. Deuteronomy 32.8-9 describes how Yahweh’s dispersal of the nations at Babel resulted in his disinheriting those nations as His people:
“When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance,
when he divided mankind,
he fixed the borders of the peoples
according to the number of the sons of God.
But the Lord's portion is his people,
Jacob his allotted heritage.” [Deut 32.8-9, ESV]
This text is referring to the time when God ‘divided mankind.’ That is clearly a reference to the judgment mankind incurred after the Tower of Babel. The text adds an interesting insight: “When he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God.” Many English translations render this text as saying that God divided the borders of the peoples according to the number of the “sons of Israel”; this is because some ancient manuscripts read that God divided according to the sons of God and others say He did it according to the sons of Israel. So which was it? The Dead Sea Scrolls record it as “the sons of God,” so this seems the likeliest explanation (as these are the earliest 'primary' manuscripts we have). This text is telling us, then, that God gave the scattered nations over to the sons of God. In other words, Yahweh decided that since the people of the world didn’t want to worship Him, He would pass them off to someone else. He wasn’t going to be their ‘official’ God anymore. This is the same kind of logic Paul uses in Romans 1.18-25 when he says that God “gave [humankind] over” to their persistent rebellion. Sometimes God gives people precisely what they want as an act of judgment. The people at Babel didn’t want Yahweh as their God, so God honored their wish: He divided them according to “the sons of God” (the loyal celestial beings of His divine council) and instructed them to rule over the nations. This doesn’t mean that the people were without hope, however, as the very next verse tells us that “Yahweh’s portion is His people, Jacob His allotted heritage.” In other words, though God scattered the nations and put them under the rule and authority of lower gods, He was going to choose for Himself His own nation, whom He would use (as we will see) to bring the scattered nations back to Him. God decided that He would enter into a covenant relationship with a new people that did not yet exist: the people of Israel. It’s no surprise, then, that in the very next chapter of Genesis, we see Yahweh calling Abram to be the patriarch of God’s chosen people. The calling of Abram is intimately connected to the dispersal of the nations after the Tower of Babel. Another text that hones in this point is Deuteronomy 4.19-20:
And beware lest you raise your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, you be drawn away and bow down to them and serve them, these that the Lord your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven. But the Lord has taken you and brought you out of the iron furnace, out of Egypt, to be a people of his own inheritance, as you are this day. [Deut 4.19-20, ESV]
Just as Yahweh ‘apportioned’ the nations to the sons of God in Deuteronomy 32, here Yahweh is ‘apportioning’ the gods to those nations. God decreed after Babel that the nations He’d forsaken would have other gods over them. It’s as if God were saying, “Fine, if you don’t want to obey me, I don’t want you. You can have a new landlord.” In the passage above, Yahweh is warning His people against worshiping the ‘host of heaven’ whom God allotted to the other nations. By this point in the story, the loyal elohim placed over the nations had gone rogue. They weren’t interested in doing God’s bidding. They got a taste of power and they loved it. They had the chance to be worshiped, to experience what the Diviner of Genesis 3 was after all along, and they plunged headfirst into ruling their own little national enclaves. These gods tickled the fancies of those under them, and they soaked up the worship of their nations. They staked themselves against Yahweh and His plans for the world, and thus they were by consequence opposed to Yahweh’s people, Israel. One of the reasons that Yahweh ordered the Israelites to be so merciless in their conquest of the Promised Land was that the nations there were under foreign gods who would stop at nothing to bend the Israelites to their will. The Conquest of Canaan was truly a ‘holy war’, not only against the descendants of the Nephilim (as we saw last week) but also against the hostile turncoat sons of God ruling these pagan nations.
One of the most fascinating psalms is Psalm 82, in which Yahweh is judging the rebellious elohim for their corruption in administering the nations they’d been given after Babel. The psalm reads:
God has taken his place in the divine council;
in the midst of the gods he holds judgment:
“How long will you judge unjustly
and show partiality to the wicked?
Give justice to the weak and the fatherless;
maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute.
Rescue the weak and the needy;
deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”
They have neither knowledge nor understanding,
they walk about in darkness;
all the foundations of the earth are shaken.
I said, “You are gods,
sons of the Most High, all of you;
nevertheless, like men you shall die,
and fall like any prince.”
Arise, O God, judge the earth;
for you shall inherit all the nations! [Psalm 82, ESV]
In this psalm, God takes His place ‘in the divine council’ (understood as His heavenly throne room), and ‘in the midst of the gods’ He holds judgment. These gods are the rebellious elohim whom He placed over the nations. He charges them with corruption. They’re unjust, and He levels charge after charge of injustice against them. In their rebellion they showed themselves as being ‘without knowledge nor understanding,’ walking about in darkness. The result is that ‘all the foundations of the earth are shaken’: their corruption has filtered down to the nations under them, and everything has gone horribly awry. Yahweh acknowledges that they are gods, ‘sons of the Most High,’ and then He pronounces judgment: ‘like men you shall die, and fall like any prince!’ Because of their rebellion, they are destined for destruction. The remedy to this state-of-affairs – of all the nations gone wrong, misled by their incompetent and unjust gods – is for Yahweh to ‘take back the reigns,’ so-to-speak; thus the psalm ends with a cry for God to judge the earth and inherit the nations. Even now these rebellious elohim are alive and active (the New Testament, as we will see, tells us as much); but their sentence has been passed, and they are simply awaiting their final execution – and doing everything they can in the meantime to delay it. They know their execution will come when God ‘takes back the nations’ by the advance of the gospel, by the spread of the Kingdom of God inaugurated by Christ, and so they oppose it tooth and nail. Isaiah 34.1-4 speaks of these elohim’s ultimate destruction:
Draw near, O nations, to hear,
and give attention, O peoples!
Let the earth hear, and all that fills it;
the world, and all that comes from it.
For the Lord is enraged against all the nations,
and furious against all their host;
he has devoted them to destruction, has given them over for slaughter.
Their slain shall be cast out,
and the stench of their corpses shall rise;
the mountains shall flow with their blood.
All the host of heaven shall rot away,
and the skies roll up like a scroll.
All their host shall fall,
as leaves fall from the vine,
like leaves falling from the fig tree. [Isaiah 34.1-4, ESV]
Isaiah is writing about the cosmic ‘Day of Yahweh’ in which God will fully and finally judge wickedness, eradicate evil, and heal the cosmos. On this day – what Christians often call The Final Judgment – the wicked ‘host of heaven’ shall rot away. The judgment Isaiah prophecies isn’t simply against the wicked nations. It’s also against ‘all their host,’ understood here not as the ‘people’ of the pagan nations but as the gods – the elohim – set over them. These rogue elohim have been ‘devoted to destruction,’ and they will be ‘given over for slaughter.’ This is a future reality that has yet to take place, but it is guaranteed.
To quickly capture what we’ve learned so far (a re-hash can be helpful to prevent us from getting bogged down as we move forward): after the Tower of Babel, God dispersed the nations; He set these nations under the administration and management of loyal members of His heavenly council; God’s plan wasn’t to forever be done with the scattered nations but to eventually reclaim them via His chosen people, Israel; but at some point between the disinheritance of the nations and the calling of Abraham, the elohim went rogue (whether this was a concerted rebellion or a domino-effect of one stepping out of line here, another going his way there, etc. isn’t laid out); these rebellious sons of God led their nations astray as they took God’s place as ‘King God’ in the nations’ societies; God summoned these rebellious elohim to His heavenly courtroom, chastised them for their rebellion, and pronounced a sentence of destruction on them. Their destruction is certain, but it has yet to take place. Even now they are active in the world, under Sentence of Death and doing all they can to delay the inevitable.
With all this fresh in our minds, we need to understand that when the Bible speaks of foreign gods – the gods of Egypt, for example, or the gods of the Ammonites, the Canaanites, the Philistines, the Moabites, what-have-you – the Bible isn’t talking about made-up gods. The Bible’s talking about real gods (albeit created gods who are nowhere near the power and authority of the Eternal God, Yahweh) who are opposed to God and God’s people. This is the reason God’s prophets, when pronouncing judgment on pagan nations, also pronounced judgment on those pagan nations’ gods. Take, for example, just a handful of passages from Jeremiah 46-51, in which Yahweh stands in judgment against the pagan nations and pronounces their doom because of their wickedness. In these passages, which are aimed at specific nations, Yahweh also dooms the nations’ gods. In Jeremiah 48.7, Moab shall be ‘taken’ – and her god Chemosh ‘shall go into exile, with his priests and his officials.’ In 49.3, Ammon’s god Milcom ‘shall go into exile, with his priests and his officials.’ And in 50.2-3, Babylon’s fall shames its god Bel and dismays its god Merodach. These aren’t poetic licenses but actual pronouncements of judgment against the corrupt gods in authority over these pagan nations. The Old Testament portrays pagan gods as real; they’re created beings who went astray, lead nations off track, and they have real power. Elijah’s contest between Yahweh and Baal in 1 Kings 18 wasn’t a charade: it was a real contest. The prophets of Baal agreed to it because they knew Baal had power. What they refused to believe – and what became abundantly clear – was that Yahweh’s power was far greater than Baal’s. Again and again throughout the Old Testament, the message isn’t that “there are no powerful gods in existence” but that Yahweh is far greater than them in every way. In story after story, you can practically hear Yahweh singing, “Whatever you can do, I can do better!”
The Exodus story is filled with this kind of stuff. In Exodus 7.8-13, Aaron’s staff turned into a serpent to showcase Yahweh’s power. Egyptian sorcerers smugly replicated the miracle: they had gods, too, you know! When Aaron’s snake devoured the Egyptian snakes, the message was clear: Yahweh is greater than your Egyptian gods! All the plagues cast on Egypt weren’t simply ‘punishments’ on Egypt due to Pharaoh’s refusal to obey Moses’ divine instructions; each and every one was an attack on Egypt’s deities. The plague that turned the Nile River to blood was an attack on Osiris, whose task was to keep the Nile River ‘in check.’ Osiris lacked the power to stand against Yahweh. The plague of frogs mocked the Egyptian god Heqt, who was symbolized by frogs. According to Egyptian religious beliefs, frogs weren’t allowed to be killed, and one who killed frogs was subject to the death penalty. Because of this plague, frogs were everywhere (even in Pharaoh’s bedchamber), and they were being killed and thrown into piles without any regard for Heqt. Frogs were primeval creatures that were viewed as the original earth deities that lived underground and gave birth to the original order of creation. Thus the plague of frogs not only mocked Heqt but also showed that Yahweh was in control of the ones who supposedly birthed creation! The plagues of insects – first gnats, then flies – attacked the Egyptian god Uachit, who was supposed to control insects. In the plague on Egyptian livestock, in which all of Egypt’s precious livestock died, Yahweh was mocking the Egyptian gods Apis and Hathor, who were represented by being ‘in the flesh’ of two chosen and doted-upon cattle. When these precious two cattle died, Yahweh in effect ‘killed’ Apis and Hathor. The plague of boils mocked the Egyptian healer-god Imhotep; Imhotep was impotent, unable to protect the Egyptian people, but Yahweh was able to keep His people, the Israelites, from experiencing a single boil. The plagues of hail and locusts destroyed Egypt’s crops; the Egyptian god Isis was tasked with protecting Egypt’s crops, but this deity couldn’t stand against Yahweh. The ninth plague of darkness over all Egypt (except for the Israelite Quarter) was an attack on the Egyptian sun god Amun-Ra, whose power couldn’t penetrate Yahweh’s darkness. The three days of darkness put the Egyptians in a psychological conundrum. Because of the darkness and the absence of the sun, three conclusions had to be drawn regarding Amun-Ra, who was one of the greatest Egyptian deities: either Amun-Ra hated the Egyptians (for they have somehow offended him), Amun-Ra was dead (perhaps killed by YHWH), or Amun-Ra was alive and rooting for the Egyptians but defeated temporarily by Yahweh in a cosmic battle. It was probably during this three-day period of darkness that many Egyptians decided to throw in their lot with Yahweh and the Israelites. The tenth plague – the death of Egypt’s firstborn sons – transcends the previous nine. This plague isn’t presented so much as a ‘contest’ between Yahweh and the gods of Egypt but as Yahweh’s vengeful act of retribution against Egypt. The plague is so terrifying that ‘not even a dog will bark’ against Israel, implying that the dogs recognized Yahweh’s power. The beginning of Exodus opened with the Egyptian killing Hebrew babies by throwing them into the Nile River – perhaps as a sacrifice to their crocodile-god Sobek – and now Yahweh is killing Egypt’s children. The message is clear: “You killed the children of My people, so I am killing your children as recompense!” By the end of the tenth plague, Egypt’s gods had been put to shame and Pharaoh was broken by the suffering enacted on the Egyptian people. He relented, allowing the Israelites to leave – but he had a change of heart and ordered his soldiers to recapture them. This leads us to the Red Sea Showdown, which is the climax of Yahweh’s ‘war’ against Egypt. God parted the Red Sea to allow the Israelites to pass to the other side without having to swim. The Egyptian chariots catch up to them and give chase through the parted sea. The Bible tells us that as they were bearing down on the Israelite rearguard, Yahweh ‘looked’ from the clouds. The Hebrew word translated ‘look’ also means ‘appear,’ so that the idea that Yahweh ‘appeared’ to the Egyptian charioteers. He ‘unveiled’ Himself, taking on a certain form, and when the charioteers saw Yahweh in the cloud, both animals and soldiers were scared witless and thrown into confusion. The chariot wheels began coming off the chariots as the animals went mad with terror. The soldiers, realizing that Yahweh was again fighting for his people, high-tailed it back towards shore – and it was then that God released the waters. The waters came down so hard that the Egyptians were crushed; neither animal nor person could survive.
Given all this, are we to believe that each and every one of Egypt’s deities corresponded to an elohim? This is unlikely (the Hindu pantheon would demand a lot of rogue sons of God!). Are we to believe that there was an elohim named Sobek, an elohim named Amun-Ra, and an elohim named Hathor who was really into cows? Again: probably not. The idea isn’t that each and every pagan god directly corresponds to an elohim with the same nature and attributes; the idea is that there were powerful deities over the nations who were leading the nations astray. More likely than not, pagan peoples, bent towards the worship of gods catered to their flights of fancy, worshiped deities of their own creation, and the elohim ‘play-acted’ in that they accepted the peoples’ worship, did miracles here and there, and promoted their idolatry. In modern states, steeped in naturalistic materialism, these rogue elohim aren’t going to promote themselves as such; rather, they’re going to do whatever they can, ‘according to the times,’ to lead people astray. This doubtlessly includes the promotion of atheism, anti-Christian rhetoric, and the exaltation of perversity and the condemnation of God’s law that we see today in the western world.
There are a handful of passages in the Old Testament that gives us glimpses of ‘spiritual warfare’ between elohim loyal to Yahweh and elohim in rebellion against Yahweh. One of the most interesting is found in Daniel 10:12-20, in which the prophet Daniel is visited by an unnamed messenger from Yahweh who has some interesting ‘behind-the-scenes’ information:
Then [the unnamed angel] said to me, “Fear not, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your heart to understand and humbled yourself before your God, your words have been heard, and I have come because of your words. The prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days, but Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, for I was left there with the kings of Persia, and came to make you understand what is to happen to your people in the latter days. For the vision is for days yet to come.” When he had spoken to me according to these words, I turned my face toward the ground and was mute. And behold, one in the likeness of the children of man touched my lips. Then I opened my mouth and spoke. I said to him who stood before me, “O my lord, by reason of the vision pains have come upon me, and I retain no strength. How can my lord's servant talk with my lord? For now no strength remains in me, and no breath is left in me.” Again one having the appearance of a man touched me and strengthened me. And he said, “O man greatly loved, fear not, peace be with you; be strong and of good courage.” And as he spoke to me, I was strengthened and said, “Let my lord speak, for you have strengthened me.” Then he said, “Do you know why I have come to you? But now I will return to fight against the prince of Persia; and when I go out, behold, the prince of Greece will come.”
The prophet Daniel was to be given a message concerning Persia’s fall and the rise of Alexander the Great and the dispersion of Alexander’s Greek empire – but that message was delayed. The unnamed angel told Daniel that the delay wasn’t because God hadn’t heard his prayer; Yahweh indeed dispatched a messenger to give Daniel the vision he needed, but that messenger was delayed by ‘the Prince of Persia.’ This wasn’t a human being but a celestial being, a rogue elohim who was in authority over the nation of Persia. It seems that this rogue elohim didn’t merely ‘blockade’ the messenger but ‘imprisoned’ him, for he was left ‘with the kings of Persia’ (likely lower-class rogue elohim working underneath the Prince of Persia) until he could be freed by Michael the Archangel. This unnamed messenger informed Daniel that once he got his job done (giving information about what was going to transpire for Persia and Greece), the “Prince of Greece” would come. This is likely another rogue elohim, set over Greece, who himself was going to war against the Prince of Persia. We thus see what looks like infighting among the rogue elohim (and, as history serves, the ‘Prince of Greece’ won out against the ‘Prince of Persia’). We know from history that Persia was overthrown by Alexander the Great of Macedon, who conquered Greece and then conquered much of the known world. This passage implies that Alexander had help from a rebellious elohim (but we also know that Yahweh orchestrates history, so that the wicked schemes of the Prince of Greece were allowed to prosper only because Greece’s rise to dominance furthered Yahweh’s plans for history).
The concept of rogue elohim ruling over pagan nations – or at least over geographical territory – carries over into the New Testament. This is what Paul’s speaking of in 1 Corinthians 8 and 10. The Corinthians were asking, “Is it okay to eat meat sacrificed to an idol?” In 1 Corinthians 8.4, Paul says that ‘an idol is nothing at all in the world and there is no God but one.’ This is classic monotheism: there is no Creator God but Yahweh. Is Paul, then, denying the existence of other gods as taught in the Old Testament? Not at all, for in 1 Corinthians 10.20 he states that ‘what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God.’ Paul is correct in that there is no Creator God but Yahweh; and he’s correct in stating that sacrifices made to idols are actually sacrifices made to demons. Remember that the rogue elohim, in the New Testament, are considered ‘demons’ (along with the disembodied spirits of dead Nephilim and their descendants). Paul is acknowledging that there are real deities lurking behind pagan religion, and this is precisely what the Old Testament teaches. He simply calls them ‘demons’ because they are on a wholly lower plane than Yahweh, the Creator, and Jesus Christ, His Son. The Apostle Paul builds upon this belief in other passages, too. Paul calls these ‘demons’ the ‘rulers of this age’ in 1 Corinthians 2.6, 8; he calls them rulers ‘in heavenly places’ in Ephesians 3.10; and in Ephesians 2.2 he speaks of ‘the ruler of the authority of the air.’ He speaks of these ‘demonic’ beings when he writes about ‘principalities, powers and authorities, and dominions and lords.’ In Ephesians 6.12, he tells us point-blank that ‘our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the world rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.’ In Ephesians 1.20-21, he writes that when God raised Jesus from the dead, ‘he seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion.’ It was only after Christ had risen that God’s plan of redemption and retaking the world was ‘made known… to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places’ (Ephesians 3.10). These cosmic forces are ‘the rulers and the authorities’ whom Christ disarmed and put to shame at the cross (Colossians 2.15). Paul’s writings alert us to several things:
First, rebellious elohim, though under judgment and destined for destruction on the Day of Yahweh, are still operative. They aren’t a thing of the past; they currently ‘war’ against Yahweh and His people.
Second, these celestial rebels aren’t just wandering around wreaking havoc however they can. Both the Old and New Testament present them as having dominion. We know that after Babel, elohim were placed over all the nations, and eventually they rebelled against God to draw the nations away from worshiping the Creator. Though nations rise and fall, the idea is that they’re still operative. The ‘dominion’ and geographical ruler-ship of evil celestial beings is a biblical concept. Thus we can assume that even the modern nations – such as the United States, England, and China – are the focus of rogue sons of God seeking to stem the tide of God’s kingdom and to lead people stray. Our current cultural climate that is hostile to God is no accident; there is a war going on in heaven that has serious repercussions in the here and now. Though this war has ebbs and flows, the future victory of Christ’s kingdom over the nations is guaranteed. He will draw all nations back to Himself.
Third, these evil rulers are ‘disarmed.’ This means that they are impotent against the gospel and the spread of the kingdom. Though they may check its advance here-and-there, the outcome is certain. They’re fighting a losing battle. It’s not surprising that parts of the world that have been historically pagan and mercilessly anti-Christian are becoming Christianized. The kingdom is advancing, and the powers and principalities cannot stop it.
Fourth, Christians are a focus of this ‘spiritual war.’ We are involved in it, even if we can’t ‘see’ our enemies with our five senses. When we proclaim the gospel, we’re fighting against the evil powers and principalities that have set themselves against God. When we resist temptation to sin and devote ourselves to obeying God, we’re fighting against the rogue elohim. When we speak up against the sins and deceptions of godless culture, we’re on the front lines against the schemes of the unjust sons of God.
At one point in time, the United States could be considered a ‘Christian Nation,’ in that most its mores and values – even if they weren’t followed, and even if those in power chafed against them – were Christian in nature. In the past decades, there has been a considerable shift. Our culture promotes wicked perversity of all stripes; our culture justifies the genocide of unborn imagers of God; our culture sets it teeth against God’s created order for men, women, and families. When we as Christians oppose the world’s schemes and programs, we aren’t merely ‘standing up for what’s right.’ We’re engaged in a holy war against paganism and rebellious gods. Ephesians 2.2 tells us that those who don’t have Christ walk according to the course of the world opposed to God, according to ‘the ruler of the authority of the air, the spirit now working in the sons of disobedience,’ whom is best identified as a poetic way of referring to the evil deities hostile to God and the kingdom. Those who embrace and promote the perversions of our culture may think themselves enlightened, but they are deceived and in darkness. Our mission as Christians is to be heralds of the gospel, to be on the front lines in God’s reclaiming the nations to Himself. This is a mission that got its start with the call of Abraham in Genesis 12, a mission that got divine power at Pentecost, and a mission that will be fulfilled when Christ has ‘abolished all rule and all authority and power; for it is necessary for [Christ] to reign until he has put things under his feet.” (1 Corinthians 15.24-25). The messianic prophecy in Psalm 2 captures the advance of Christ’s kingdom. We’ll finish this lesson by examining what it means (noting that there are various ways to interpret this psalm, but this is what I find most likely):
Why do the nations rage
and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers take counsel together,
against Yahweh and against his Anointed, saying,
“Let us burst their bonds apart
and cast away their cords from us.” [Psalm 2.1-3]
The psalmist takes a hard look at the chaos and wickedness among the nations and asks, “How did we get here?” He then presents the answer: the ‘kings of the earth’ and ‘the rulers’ have counseled among themselves and decided to break allegiance to Yahweh and his Anointed (understood here as God’s chosen people, Israel, in the first instance, and as the Messiah, in the second instance). The psalmist, according to the Jewish worldview, is referring to how the elohim set over the nations went rogue and set themselves against Yahweh. This is why everything’s in such a mess! The psalmist continues:
He who sits in the heavens laughs;
the Lord holds them in derision.
Then he will speak to them in his wrath,
and terrify them in his fury, saying,
“As for me, I have set my King
on Zion, my holy hill.” [Psalm 2.4-6]
Why is Yahweh laughing? He’s laughing because they’re so stupid. They’ve seen how the Diviner failed to bring his usurpation of God’s throne to pass; they witnessed how the rebellious Watchers were imprisoned in the depths of the earth; and they still had the nerve to rebel against God! He laughs, too, because He knows they’re without hope. They may make a mess of things, but He will be triumphant. This isn’t to say Yahweh isn’t mad about what went down; He’s enraged by their rebellion, and He has a message for them: there’s a King who will bring them their due recompense.
I will tell of the decree:
The Lord said to me, “You are my Son;
today I have begotten you.
Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage,
and the ends of the earth your possession.
You shall break[b] them with a rod of iron
and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel.” [Psalm 2.7-9]
The psalmist captures Yahweh’s words to his Son, the Messiah, in which we learn that Yahweh’s plan isn’t to have the nations ‘cast off’ forever. The nations are to be Messiah’s heritage; the ends of the earth are to be His possession. The nations that set themselves against Messiah will be broken as with a rod of iron; they will be dashed to pieces like a potter’s vessel. They won’t be able to stand against Messiah, and Messiah’s kingdom will overtake them. The psalmist then gives a warning to the human rulers of nations:
Now therefore, O kings, be wise;
be warned, O rulers of the earth.
Serve the Lord with fear,
and rejoice with trembling.
Kiss the Son,
lest he be angry, and you perish in the way,
for his wrath is quickly kindled.
Blessed are all who take refuge in him. [Psalm 2.10-12]
Given that Messiah’s kingdom will subjugate all kingdoms to itself; given that those nations who oppose Messiah will be dealt with severely; given that the only hope is for nations to ‘kiss the Son’ and take refuge in him; given all this, the national rulers would do well to ‘serve Yahweh with fear and rejoice with trembling.’ Those nations – and their gods – who stand against Christ’s kingdom will incur Christ’s wrath, be judged, destroyed, and overcome. But those who take refuge in Messiah will be blessed.
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