This Injustice Will Not Stand: Psalm 82 and the Divine Council - Episode 197

Carey Griffel: Welcome to Genesis Marks the Spot, where we raid the ivory tower of biblical theology without ransacking our faith. My name is Carey Griffel, and I am here back after an unintentional hiatus, and there is a lot I could say about that, but I think I'm gonna leave that for later on because I really want to get to the content that I'm going to give you today.

[00:00:32] It probably sounds a little bit different because I moved and I'm in a different room with different ambiance, and I'm not really sure how I'm gonna handle that because it sounds really strange to me. But at any rate, the sound is the least of the concern for today because I'm going to share my presentation that I gave at the Divine Council Worldview Conference. I was very blessed to be able to read my paper called This Injustice Will Not Stand. It's about Psalm 82, and it's about frame semantics. although you can read the paper yourself, it's freely available to read, in my presentation at the end, I was also blessed to be able to do a little bit of a Q&A session. And I had some amazing questions.

[00:01:22] This was absolutely fabulous, you guys. I had so much fun with the Q&A part. And I had people come to me afterwards and say that they really particularly enjoyed the Q&A part because it really helped to get them to a little bit better understanding than just my paper, which makes sense because my paper was a bit of mix between exegesis of Psalm 82 combined with trying to show the actual methodology of frame semantics that I use, or at least part of it. And so because that paper was that, it meant that I couldn't really entirely explain frame semantics to an audience who had never heard of it before.

[00:02:06] So that's where the Q&A comes in, and a lot of insightful questions from people to really clarify what I'm trying to say about frames and a whole bunch of other detail. so all that being, I hope you will enjoy my presentation of This Injustice Will Not Stand, given October ninth, twenty twenty-six at the first Divine Council Worldview Conference.

[00:02:35] All right. See if this works. All right, um, it is absolutely such a privilege to be here, and particularly such a privilege to be in a room full of people who love Dr. Heiser.

[00:02:50] I, I am so grateful. And thank you, Drenna. Thank you for everything that you do for Mike's legacy, for his memory, for the community. And thank you all for coming. We couldn't have a conference without you, so I'm super grateful that you were able to come, and I know there's a whole bunch of people who wanted to come, and so thinking of all of those people tonight as well.

[00:03:15] This is not just a conference where you go and you don't know who these people are. On some level, you know who these people are. Now, with all of that in mind, who is excited about frame semantics? Yeah. For those of you familiar with my work, you're gonna know a little bit about what I talk about tonight. For those of you who don't know my work, I hope that you will walk away excited. Yes, excited about a little thing called frame semantics. So I am here tonight to present my paper. It is entitled This Injustice Will Not Stand: Reframing Divine Rebellion Through Justice and Failed Governance in Psalm 82.

[00:04:03] Now, reframing is academic jargon. You see it a lot, but I really chose this word very intentionally.

[00:04:12] In his quest to recover the supernatural worldview of the ancient audience, Michael Heiser helped a generation of readers take the Elohim of Psalm 82 seriously as divine beings. This recovery of the biblical worldview had as much to do with the methodology that Dr. Heiser used as it did the content of the worldview itself.

[00:04:36] Both the methodology as well as the detail that that methodology uncovers were crucial to Dr. Heiser's project. And today, I will use frame semantics to ask us to take the Psalm's own description of the gods' offense as seriously as we take the question of who those gods are. Heiser's articulation of what he named the Deuteronomy 32 worldview involves a divine rebellion framework that is shaped by Genesis 3 The scattering of the nations and the people of those nations becoming estranged from Yahweh and placed under spiritual beings who become their gods forms the backdrop of Psalm 82. This idea that the allotted Elohim become gods is an important aspect of Heiser's description of the situation, as he believed that the divine beings placed over the nations were initially loyal, later became corrupt, and wrongfully received the worship of the nations.

[00:05:41] While certainly a plausible construction, there are parts of this that are not stated directly, even within Psalm 82. But on account of the way that Heiser connected these ideas, the Psalm that describes the judgment of the gods is deeply connected to the story of rebellion, and allegiance, and worship.

[00:06:03] This paper will not defend or argue against that idea, which is built through a wider net of canonical texts. What it does ask is what conceptual scene Psalm 82 itself most clearly evokes, and secondarily, what warrants the local frame provides for allegiance and worship within that scene. Frame semantics will provide the means of testing that question. Frame semantics was developed initially by Charles Fillmore, and it is a means to understand how humans conduct or construct meaning in their cognitive and linguistic imaginations. In frame semantics, words do not come preloaded with a dictionary definitions, but their meaning is encoded within a complex conceptual structure called a frame.

[00:06:59] I use the technical term frame elements for the components through which that conceptual scene actually becomes visible, and the way that we talk about it as well. So for the purposes of what I'm going to be talking about tonight, I examine features like participants, the roles they occupy, and their relationships, as well as the expectations, the actions, the settings, and the outcomes. So that's a lot of things, right? But two of them that I will focus on tonight are going to be the participants as well as the roles. God and the Elohim, for example, are participants in Psalm 82, while the ideas of judge or judged party describe roles that the participants fill. Now, leveraged for biblical exegesis, frame semantics isn't simply a more elaborate form of word study because individual words do evoke frames, but they don't contain them in full.

[00:08:05] When faced with a word or a phrase, the interpreter asks how the passages as well as the background fills out the scene. Every element of a frame will not be lexically explicit since frames necessarily will evoke knowledge and expectations beyond what is stated. Such elements may arise either from cultural or canonical context, presuming that the text can legitimately hold that said canonical context.

[00:08:40] The reason we can use intertextuality to shed light on a passage is because the Bible is not a normal book. It is more than a collection of individual authors. Thus Genesis can be reasonably read in light of the entire Pentateuch because the received audience would have read it as a complete structure. Frame semantics provides caution against bringing in, for instance, anachronistic context from the prophetic books or the New Testament into the frame of Genesis.

[00:09:15] Now certainly, we can use the entire Scripture to understand the revelation of God. But since we do not have a text that dropped from heaven in an instant, it is necessary to take first the local frame of earlier texts before we supply the wider one of the whole. We must also guard against assumptions that the modern interpreter brings to the text. This accords well with the methodology of Dr. Heiser himself. Now to clarify some terms, I will refer to the frame evoked within a particular passage as its local frame, and I use the term canonical frame for the various frames in different passages throughout the canon, and then I use the term theological frame for the further synthesis of those frames into theological categories.

[00:10:10] These are all working definitions. They're not formally established categories. The first task of identifying the local frame may not be a simple one, as it may be implicit. A passage does not have to announce, for instance, that this is a courtroom scene in order to evoke one. If it provides elements such as a judge, accusations, evidence, a verdict, penalties, these elements together will allow us to recognize the larger conceptual situation. The meaning of each individual part is clarified by its relationship to the others, and it is the accumulation of the relationships that allows the local frame to emerge. A lexical item considered apart from those relationships is, in an important sense, out of its element. It is essential as well to place these elements within the specific cultural background of the frame. A courtroom in the ancient Near East is not precisely the same as a courtroom in Middle America, and so we cannot import all of the same ideas. This also means that frames cannot be identified simply by tracking the recurrence of specific words. That can help, but two passages can have the same frame even when they use different vocabulary, so long as they have the same frame structure.

[00:11:44] And that structure is not wedded to particular agents who act within the frame, but it's controlled more by roles and their relationships. For example, within a judicial frame, the role of judge might be occupied by a human magistrate, a king, a divine being, or God Himself. Another reason we cannot just track specific words is because a word may evoke more than one frame, and it can participate in more than one frame.

[00:12:18] So to judge can mean to decide a legal dispute in a courtroom. Pretty simple, right? But it can also describe the broader work of ruling or governing, as we see with the Israelite judges. So frames such as these can and often do overlap, but they should not be collapsed into one another when they differ enough. Frames are defined not by single words, but by the frame elements that come together to construct them. So how we find them is to lay out the frames in each passage, and that allows us to also compare the frames. So I argue that Psalm 82 frames the offense of the gods most immediately as a failure of judicial governance.

[00:13:12] That basically is bringing in two frames together. Their rebellion, insofar as that category is appropriate, consists here in the corruption and the neglect of their subordinate judicial responsibility in governing nations. And we see that throughout the whole psalm, and we need the whole psalm in order to create that frame. The effects of that failure do extend beyond individual justice to the destabilization of the cosmos itself. And the psalm concludes with an appeal for God to arise and judge the Earth. Now, read in this way, Psalm 82 does not strictly tell us that divine rulers have rebelled against the Most High. But it does give us the content of their failed rule and why God is judging them.

[00:14:07] So let's look at this local frame of Psalm 82, which opens within a council scene, but not one that's simply involved with deliberating the minutes of the court. God stands in the divine assembly, and in the midst of the gods, He judges a very complicated case. The opening verse supplies several frame elements at once along with their relationships.

[00:14:33] We have a setting, which is the divine assembly, the initial participants, God and the gods. And we have the action of judgment, which moves from the head of the council toward its members. In this scene, God is not merely present as the head of a council on a typical day of deliberation. He occupies a role of judge, while the other divine beings are those whose conduct is under judgment. More than a glimpse behind the curtain of divine administration, the psalm opens with accountability within that administration.

[00:15:10] This provides some warrant for the idea of rebellion, certainly, but the frame itself is not focused on the gods' rebellion against the Most High, but on their conduct towards those that they have some authority over. So taking the Elohim as genuine divine beings matters for identifying the particular occupants of the scene, but their specific identity does not tell us anything about the role that they occupy, nor does it tell us the frame at large.

[00:15:43] The Elohim are participants who, again, are being judged. So that is not a normal council member situation, right? The charge that follows will demonstrate that they have done wrong in relation to other people, not strictly in relation to God himself. So this frame continues with a nested hierarchy where we have judges who are also judged.

[00:16:11] The supernatural identity of the Elohim does not compete with this judicial reading. While humans are certainly held to the same standards of judicial accountability, the role of judge is, not an ontological one. It has nothing to do with who you are. It is what you do. As we shall see, one of the things that makes Psalm 82 stand out from other passages with similar frames is the scope and the consequence of the authority. But that does not change the frame itself. And the first words addressed to the gods begin to specify what happened. How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked? The verb judge alone, again, cannot settle the frame, since the concept of judging can belong to individual disputes or the task of governing.

[00:17:01] The surrounding elements tell us something about this. The word judge gives us the role, and though implied rather than stated outright, correct judgment is an attached expectation. This is another part of a frame element. The expected judgment is outlined by the violation of it. And here we have a new set of participants, the wicked, who enter the frame as the beneficiaries of the corruption.

[00:17:32] Even the phrase "how long" contributes to the frame. The charge concerns a sustained failure, which suggests an ongoing responsibility for the administration and signals that this injustice will not be allowed to stand indefinitely. The accusation that the gods show partiality to the wicked is a Hebrew expression that literally speaks of lifting the face, an idiom that can describe favorable acceptance, such as in Leviticus nineteen fifteen, which also has it within a judicial frame.

[00:18:04] Leviticus nineteen forbids doing injustice, which is specified as lifting the face of the poor or favoring the great in judgment. But in Psalm eighty-two's frame, this is similar, but the inclusion of the wicked highlights more than just their moral status. They occupy the more complicated role of a favored party, whose status in relation to the rulers has distorted the exercise of justice. As the following verse proves, this doesn't remove the fact of their wickedness inside the frame. But in verse two, their role indicates that impartiality belongs to the expected judging role, and partiality identifies the one thing that has been violated so far. Verses three to four add even more participants, and with them, a fuller description of what right judgment requires. 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. Verse two describes justice via its violation, and verses three to four provide commands that show a positive expected action. This gives the frame an expected outcome for the judged, as well as an expected action by the judge.

[00:19:33] Now, the terms weak, fatherless, afflicted, destitute, and needy likely do point to different forms of social vulnerability, and a lot of work could be done to point out the different parts of what those different positions mean. But as participants of the scene, together they share a functional relationship to the judging role as they are the people whose particular situations leave them especially dependent upon the proper execution of justice.

[00:20:06] Some are endangered by the wicked, thus documenting why the wicked are wicked, while others are vulnerable without any personal oppressor being named. The accumulation of these terms fills the frame with multiple instances of different kinds of parties toward whom these gods have failed in their responsibility. The literary correspondence between verses two and verses three to four really ties the frame together. You judge unjustly is answered by the command to judge the weak and fatherless rightly. Showing partiality to the wicked is answered finally by the command to deliver the needy from the hand of the wicked.

[00:20:49] The wicked who appear first as improper beneficiaries of judgment worsen the situation by being part of the reason justice needs to occur in the first place. The movement of verse four into rescue and deliver continues to test the boundaries of a normal judicial frame as we may have understood it to this point because, at least for us, these are not commonly used words for a judge.

[00:21:16] The psalm says remarkably little about punishing the wicked, even though punishment might ordinarily be expected within a judicial frame. The imperatives of verse three to four primarily foreground what proper judgment must accomplish for those who have been wronged, not those who did wrong. The movement from vindication into rescue and deliverance shows that justice is to act to change the condition of those under threat. this focuses justice on a projected positive outcome toward the injured party rather than merely punitive or retributive one oriented toward the offender. And this may be one of the aspects of the Psalm that indicates our common frame of justice today might not have the same center of gravity as that of the Bible's.

[00:22:10] Having spelled out what the gods should have been doing in relation to those under them, the Psalm turns in verse five to ignorance, darkness, and instability. They have neither knowledge nor understanding. They walk about in darkness. All the foundations of the earth are shaken. Unlike the accusations and imperatives of the previous section, this verse is descriptive rather than another clear statement of violation or obligation. Unfortunately, the description is not entirely clear, primarily because the identity of the they is not really certain, though the referent must be one of the participants already present in the text.

[00:22:52] The vague concepts of ignorance and darkness do not assist in determining what's happening, though the most immediate possibility is that the they are the gods addressed in verses two to four. In that reading, then their lack of knowledge and understanding is part of the thing that characterizes them as failed judges.

[00:23:12] There is, however, another possibility. Because the subject is left unstated, some identify the they with the people affected by the gods' failure. In that case, ignorance and darkness describe the consequences of what the gods have produced for others. Heiser adopts this reading and makes it an important step in his interpretation of what's happening in the Psalm. When his wider canonical framework is brought into view, new information comes to light. After citing verse five, he remarks, "But injustice wasn't the only crime of the gods." And he proceeds to identify their acceptance of the nation's worship as an additional offense. His identification of the pronoun with the nations thus allows verse five to function for him as a bridge from the injustice already explicitly described to the worship and allegiance concerns supplied by the Deuteronomy thirty-two framework.

[00:24:13] From a transparent methodological standpoint, however, it is important to distinguish between two kinds of interpretive moves that I want to make clear here. What is a local frame, and what does it provide? And what can the canonical context enlighten into the passage? As stated previously, worship and allegiance enter Heiser's reading at this point through a canonical framework.

[00:24:41] In direct reference to Psalm eighty-two:five, he states that the gods who received the worship of the people in the nations did wrong by doing so, thereby causing the spiritual darkness or keeping the nations ignorant of Yahweh. This paper will not answer the question of whether the context of worship exists within Psalm eighty-two in some form.

[00:25:04] I do suggest that the way to approach that question is through extended application of frame semantics through relevant passages. The ambiguity of the pronoun of verse five affects some things like where the ignorance and darkness are related and the effect of it. Again, if the gods are the subject, it characterizes them. If their subjects are, then it describes what the failed gods did. Either alternative remains connected to the judicial frame. Heiser's reading, by contrast, illustrates how a canonical frame may suggest more information without requiring that conclusion from the local frame itself. Whatever the referent of they, the consequence now becomes quite literally earth-shaking at the end of the verse.

[00:25:55] Whether the language of the foundations of the Earth is understood physically, socially, or probably in terms that really don't distinguish those two things in particular, the consequence hits beyond individual parties or even groups of people. What began with distorted judgment and neglected rescue now expands to the condition of the ordered world.

[00:26:20] Though expansive, the scope of the consequences does not necessarily affect the frame itself. A frame can be narrow or wide in effect without changing, and the identity of the Elohim is sufficient to explain cosmic upheaval, but not necessarily within a simple judicial frame. So we return to the judge and the judges and the verdict in verses six to seven. "I said, 'You are gods, of the Most High, all of you. Nevertheless, like men you shall die and fall like any prince.'" Once again, the distinction between participant identity and frame role remains important. The force of the sentence, "Like men you shall die," actually depends on a contrast between their current status and their fate. The reference to falling like a prince introduces ruler language at the point of punishment.

[00:27:20] The nested hierarchy that we established earlier in the passage culminates here. But even here, retribution is not the end focus. the vulnerable still need rescue and deliverance. The foundations of the earth cannot be left to quake, and here at the end, we are left with a hope, not yet a complete resolution, but a petition. Arise, O God, judge the earth, for you shall inherit all the nations. The request for God to judge the earth is grounded in a certain declaration that He will inherit the nations, who are here finally mentioned. The combination of the terminology of nations and inheritance evokes the conceptual territory of Deuteronomy thirty-two, eight, and nine, where the nations are apportioned and Israel is Yahweh's inheritance.

[00:28:13] Though we should not force the entire frame of Deuteronomy thirty-two into Psalm eighty-two. We now have explicit language that moves the frame unmistakably into nations, possession, and rule. These elements provide the full warrant for Psalms eighty-two's judgment frame to reside within the frame of governance. Now we will look at comparative verses and frames. I don't have a whole lot of time, so these will be selective, and I will not have time to go through all of the individual frames in each of these verses, but hopefully I give you enough tonight that you can actually go home and do that yourself.

[00:28:55] Leviticus nineteen- fifteen provides the closest judicial parallel to Psalm eighty-two:two. Of course, we've already mentioned that. We have shared idiom and that alone will cause us to stand up and say, "Oh, this is similar to that." But there is more than just shared language because both passages place a judge in relation to socially differentiated parties and make impartiality toward those parties an expectation of the judging role.

[00:29:27] So in both, the status of a party must not determine the judgment. Leviticus nineteen states poor and great, and Psalm eighty-two highlights the wicked ones, which again, that makes the actual context of what's going on in Psalm eighty-two even worse. Leviticus nineteen is the verse that helps us to really establish the judicial frame in full. But Deuteronomy twenty-five, verse one presents another aspect of the familiar judicial scene. Judges face disputing parties and are able to vindicate the one in the right and condemn the wicked. So here we have another word that matches what Psalm eighty-two says, but again, it's not about the individual words, it is about the entire framework.

[00:30:16] Deuteronomy twenty-five remains very narrowly focused on deciding this is the dispute, whereas Psalm eighty-two moves beyond that into rescue and deliverance. So there's only so much we can compare the two. But again, we are looking at that narrow judicial frame. Second Chronicles nineteen, verse five through seven contains yet another relationship that is visible in Psalm eighty-two, accountability above the judge. Jehoshaphat appoints judges who judge for Yahweh, with whom there is no injustice or partiality. The frame of this passage includes a superior who appoints, judges who are subordinate to Yahweh, an entrusted task, a standard derived from Yahweh's justice, and accountability for its exercise. The important thing to note here, though, is that we have direct appointment.

[00:31:12] Within Psalm eighty-two, we do not. That adds an element into the frame of Second Chronicles, but it does not fundamentally change the frame of judgment. Taken together, these passages clarify the judicial frame established locally in Psalm eighty-two. They account well for the impartial judgment, for the vindication, for accountability.

[00:31:38] They account less fully for the extreme consequences of ruler-related elements that emerge as this Psalm develops. These features require a different set of comparative texts. Psalm 72 is a wonderful one that supplies an unequivocal royal frame, and because of that, it helps to confirm what a governance frame entails. Its participants include a king, the people he judges, the poor, the needy, and the oppressor. The king's role carries expectations and actions, the judging of the righteous, defending and delivering the vulnerable, and crushing the oppressor. The expected outcomes extend to peace, flourishing, and the condition of the realm.

[00:32:31] Adjudication is present, and it functions in an ongoing ruler-subject relationship whose consequences extend beyond individual cases. With these elements described, the correspondence with Psalm 82 is therefore structural rather than merely lexical. Although the participants differ, humans in the one case and divine beings in the other, they occupy comparable positions in the same basic relational pattern of rule, vulnerability, threat, and protection.

[00:33:04] In other words, these correspondences provide the similar frame. Psalm 82 can best be read in parallel with Psalm 72 without collapsing the distinct participants or settings of the two psalms. Isaiah 11 gives a second royal example, this time through his portrait of the Davidic messianic ruler. This passage provides an instructive contrast to Psalm 82.

[00:33:31] Isaiah's ruler possesses knowledge and understanding, where Psalm 82 presents ignorance and darkness. Isaiah eleven's ruler judges without distortion, where Psalm eighty-two's judges show partiality, and his rule tends toward order, where theirs culminates in shaken foundations. for frame correspondence, we do not need direct lexical connections for each of these in parallel, but we do need the same framework of elements. And this is what we have in Psalm seventy-two, at least in large part. Not entirely, though. There are things in Psalm eighty-two that do not appear in Psalm seventy-two. Now incidentally, the comparison here in Isaiah eleven may also lend some weight to identifying the they of Psalm eighty-two five with the gods themselves, because in Isaiah eleven, knowledge and understanding belong to the ruler who judges rightly, making that a characteristic of him.

[00:34:34] This does not resolve the grammatical ambiguity of Psalm eighty-two five, but it does provide evidence to strengthen the coherence of reading a governance frame within that. The phrase judicial governance can now be used more precisely after we've looked at both of these comparisons. Psalm eighty-two begins with a recognizable judicial frame but contains so much more than that frame explains. Psalm seventy-two and Isaiah eleven show those kinds of relationships and outcomes functioning within royal governance. Now, it might be tempting to frame Psalm eighty-two entirely within a governance frame similar to Psalm seventy-two, but there are elements which must be accounted for, such as the judging of the gods themselves, as well as the charge of injustice. We need both judgment as well as ruling in view for the entire frame.

[00:35:31] With both the local and comparative frames in view, we can now return briefly to the theological category. In Heiser's divine council framework, the gods' failure is described as rebellion against the Most High, and specifically, that rebellion is frequently seen as taking worship.

[00:35:48] This paper's argument does not rest on accepting or rejecting any of that framework. If rebellion is the larger category, Psalm eighty-two portrays it as injustice, not simply aggression against the Most High. It gives the rebellion concrete content that may be uncomfortable for those who prefer for the prime judgment against the gods to be one associated with their taking worship. We do not need to discount that idea as a whole, but what we should not do is claim that Psalm eighty-two clearly establishes the taking of worship as the gods' judged offense.

[00:36:30] The value of frame semantics for this study has been to help distinguish the elements and frames in the specific text from those introduced through broader canonical and theological relationships, frames which should be recognized as interpretive movements rather than allowed to determine the local frame in advance.

[00:36:50] That is not to say that these frames that are from the canon and theology are not important, but we start with the local frame. In Psalm eighty-two, that distinction has allowed the language of divine rebellion to be reconsidered through the actual roles, the expectations, the relationships, and outcomes that the psalm directly supplies. There's considerably more work to be done with Psalm 82 along these lines. The governance frame developed here could be tested against a range of biblical and ancient Near Eastern conceptions of divine and royal responsibility. The possibility of a worship frame deserves similar treatment through comparison with passages in which ignorance, darkness, idolatry, and knowledge occur together. Such work may strengthen, qualify, or complicate the canonical connections already proposed for Psalm 82, but those conclusions should emerge from the comparison.

[00:37:51] More generally, frame semantic work in biblical theology would benefit from explicit use criteria. Standardization for evaluating frame elements would provide means for collaborative analysis.

[00:38:05] Creating technical definitions for local, canonical, and theological frames would assist in discovering when a locally evoked frame has been expanded, transformed, or incorporated into a larger canonical or theological frame, as well as comparing whether those actually accord to the biblical text or not. The application of frame semantics with biblical exegesis might also assist in developing guardrails for introducing background information into texts without inundating the frame with information. This is not a hermeneutical free-for-all. This is biblical theology. There are rules. These areas matter precisely because biblical theology necessarily brings texts and background into relationship with one another. The task is to make that methodology visible. For readers shaped by Heiser's recovery of the supernatural worldview, a frame semantics approach extends an important part of his own methodological impulse of taking the text seriously enough to ask not only who the participants are, but what the text itself says about itself and the ancient world.

[00:39:21] Frame semantics is an especially useful tool for this project because it requires us to attune to the individual text in as particular way as possible without bringing in context that is anachronistic or otherwise inappropriate to what the individual biblical author is communicating. As Dr. Heiser said, we can let the Bible be what it is. But that means we've got our work cut out for us. Thank you. I think there was time for questions. Jennifer, you have a question. Can I give you the microphone?

[00:40:12] You talked about the phrase of lifting your face, that that was part of judgment. It made me think of, uh, Genesis 4, where he's talking to Cain, and he says, um, "Why is your face fallen? Don't you know if you do well, your face will be lifted up?" Is that-- does that any connection in your mind? It just reminded me of that verse.

[00:40:34] Oh, thanks for that question. Uh, definitely a question that we would want to look at the Hebrew for to see what the correspondence is. Um, and the phra- the, the phrase, lift up your face. See, this is a great question because again, frame semantics. You have something that is going to evoke the frame. And so lifting the face is going to evoke particular ideas, e- especially because it's an idiom and frame semantics and, and idioms and, uh, you know, figurative language go so well together.

[00:41:10] When you have something like that, it's going to pull up ideas in the people who actually use the phrase, right? But lifting up the face is going to have more than just judicial consequences, judicial frames, and so on. So just because we have this phrase does not mean necessarily that we're pulling up a judicial frame, but it might because we have it used several times for that. we have the same kind of idea pulled up in various places. If you're familiar with the story of Joseph and, the baker and that situation where there's the lifting up the head can mean execution as well, you know, things like that. So, which that's associated with judgment, but again, it-- just because we have the phrase does not necessarily mean that we, bring in all of the things because we, we also have phrases that we use in English that can have multiple meanings. And used within one context, if I'm saying something to my children, that's gonna be a very different phrase and con-- like, um, I can't even think of an idea, but you know, there's something I'm going to say to my kids that I would say to another person that's not gonna mean the same thing, and it's gonna be a very different frame of reference.

[00:42:33] Thank you, Jennifer.

[00:42:36] Yeah. Um, if-- I'm trying to get a concept of, uh, what exactly you mean by frame. So if I say, um, "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal," et cetera, everybody should know that. Uh, it's from the Declaration. Is the frame that which those words co- conjure up in our minds? For example, it would conjure up in my mind, okay, late colonial America, maybe Philadelphia, um, and men in a, in, um, Liberty Hall or something debating stuff. Is that what you meant by cultural? Is that a cultural frame, wh- what it conjures up in your head?

[00:43:26] Yes. Thank you for that question. That's, uh, also a great question. Um, so there's, there is the background information, and then there is the actual phrase that you're using. So the background information when we're talking about the Constitution is the situation with the f- the American fathers.

[00:43:45] We have, uh, the, the establishment of a nation and so on. When you use that phrase, if you're using it in conversation with someone else, you're pulling up the background information that's attached to that phrase. But the frame is what you are using it with. What are you saying about it? How are you using this background informa- You're bringing the background information into your own frame, your own conversation, the, uh, your own point that you're saying. So, um, th- this is one of the more difficult parts of frame semantics because we have the background information, and the words do form... Like, th- there's a frame that is attached to those words. That frame is specifically the founding of the nation. That is the frame. The, the frame, you are pulling up that frame to use it for your own particular purposes. Uh, for those of you who are familiar with Dr. John Walton and his work with referent and affirmation, I think that that could be pulled into frame semantics quite well, um, because of this distinction. the referent would be the Founding Fathers and their information. The affirmation would be how you are using that and what you are saying with it when you say that. Make sense? A, a follow-up. Um, so were you making the case that frame semantics is a way to understand a text or the way to understand a text?

Uh, I do think that there is a d- like, we tend... Sorry, l- let me back up. Let me, let me actually talk about truth conditional semantics. This is how we understand a word from the dictionary.

[00:45:35] We think the word cat means a cat, my, my domestic cat at home. But if you look in a dictionary, there's, like, different words that are associated with the word cat. You, you could use it in a derogatory way towards somebody who's, who's catty. So when we think in terms of, well, there's a word, that word has a definition, and it's just like this one-to-one correspondence.

[00:46:04] Frame semantics is as opposed to that, and it takes into account the way that we think and the way that we pull up background information with words. Uh, if you s- if you use the word cat in a certain situation with somebody who has a bunch of cats versus, uh, l- let's say you wanted to use it in a context where it, it was a culture where they did not keep cats in as pets, that would pull up very different associations. Instead of a pet, it's a pest or just one of those animals that hunts mice, right? And so, um, frame semantics, is very rooted in psychology, in cognitive development. And so I think this is literally the way we think and the way that we actually structure language. So then, um, a dictionary seems to me limits the number of th- this, the semantic range. So cat would never mean dog. Um, the number two would never mean, "Oh, that's number 47 and a half." So a, a dictionary limits, usually I guess, the possibility

[00:47:21] Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, sorry. Uh, when, when the dictionary is not limiting... Well, I, I see what you're saying, but I would say the dictionary is not limiting it, it is explaining how it's used. So that's why when we, we talk about translation, we talk about glosses. This is how it was translated., The translation into the English does not necessarily correspond one-to-one with the Hebrew or the Greek or so on. So you ha- you have to understand those words through their cultural framing and the things, the, the way that they used it.

[00:48:01] You mentioned that it would be another white paper to compare the darkness and the ignorance in other contexts to see if that would make sense with the worship part with Psalm 82. Is that gonna be your next white paper?

Well, since I put that in, I, I-- it might be, but, uh, I, I have quite a few other ideas. Um, I, I do, I do intend to do a lot of work in, uh, teasing out some of the distinctions between the local, the canonical, and theological frames because I, I think that this is both useful for, um, pastoral situations for preaching, um, but I, I genuinely think that an individual person could use this quite easily in your own study, uh, to actually tease out the meaning of the text.

[00:48:56] Now, there, there is this distinction. So I'm, I'm not trying to say that studying the languages and understanding Hebrew in depth is not important because those are critical. They are part of what we need to do. The great thing today is we have so much ac-access to that. So if you do not know Hebrew, you are not prevented from entering into this kind of study, in my opinion.

[00:49:23] You, you should be very careful with the, the interpretations and the things that you do with it. But in my opinion, as I have been using this, what's been absolutely fascinating to me is that when I will frame out a passage and I'll talk to somebody else who, who knows Hebrew or Greek better than me, they'll say, "Well, this is actually corresponds exactly to how I would teach this." And I'd be like, "Oh, okay. Well, thank goodness." Like, it, it, it really has had a lot of correspondence with the things that... Like, I, I will frame out a passage and I won't, double down on it and say, "This is what it means," but I talk to other people or I read other papers or, or I go investigate more and I discover that the frame that I found really does correspond with a lot of the scholarship, a lot of the linguistic elements. So I, I genuinely think that, uh, I, I wish Dr. Heiser was here so that I could bring this to him and say, "Look, how could we use this for people to understand the Bible in context?" ' Cause I, I think it's a great tool.

[00:50:28] How specifically does your work in frame semantics with this psalm support Dr. Heiser's assertion that this is an episode of the divine council and he's speaking to gods, which of course a lot of scholars attack?

[00:50:49] Thank you for that great question. Uh, I think it, it accords great, um, because again, a frame does not limit the participants. And, and because you can... A lot of the pushback against the, the supernatural view of Psalm 82, a lot of it you will see, people will say, " Well, the Bible judges humans." Yes, the Bible does judge humans. Does the Bible only judge humans? No. Do humans only... Are they the only judges? No, because we will all say God is a judge.

[00:51:30] And so the role and the action of judge does not determine who the participants are. And that this is probably one of those kind of difficult things because when we do a Bible study, we kind of drill down into this person's here, this participant's here, and so we attach the meaning of the passage to the exact participants, and those exact participants are necessary for the particular meaning of the author, but it does not frame the whole idea.

[00:52:07] You know, a lot of, a lot of what I presented here does go beyond a lot of what people talk about already in frame semantics. but it, it is used in biblical studies. It is used in dissertations. It is used other places. And, uh, I, I... Just a lot of people keep it within that realm, and I'm like, "This is good stuff. We need to get other people to understand how this works because this is how we think, and this is how we need to understand Scripture." Uh, I, I actually... I learned about frame semantics, uh, from a pastor, an old pastor, who was doing his dissertation, and he was doing his dissertation in the, the minor prophets and, uh, arguing against people who were saying that there is no discipleship in the minor prophets.

[00:52:52] And he's like, "Oh. Oh, no. Yes, there is discipleship in the minor prophets, and I'm gonna show you how," and he used frame semantics. And part of our little... We, we actually did a little Bible study where he showed us how he was doing it. I kind of think maybe he did wrong, but, you know, his point was still right. And when he showed me, he's like... It, it just, it lit up in my head. Like, this is what Dr. Heiser was doing in large part. Uh, it is what I see done often in biblical studies. But At, at least parts of it are. Uh, so you will-- Like, if you go watch BibleProject videos, you'll, you'll pick up on what I'm saying here. So you have the frame semantics that was developed, but just like with any scholarship, other people will take the ideas, they'll develop them, so on and so forth. If you have done Dr. Heiser's course in AWKNG, you have read some of Lakoff's work, and that is a direct offshoot of frame semantics. So, you know, th-there's a lot of background here. I'm just trying to pull all of that together into a usable method for us that we can actually do, that we can actually use to draw out the meaning of Scripture.

[00:54:08] Oh, okay. So I learned about frame semantics, um, five years ago. Uh, I, I have been working on it in the background. I only this last year have I, I said, "Okay, it's time. It's time. Time to get it out." And so, um, if you're interested in more of that, I have my podcast, Genesis Marks the Spot, where I go in great depth to frame semantics. And you, you'll see how I, I'm still working through the ideas and developing things. So, oh, two people. Timothy, here we go.

Hi. Um, I want to, um, maybe it's just me articulating my thoughts out loud, but I wanna think about l- you know, what you said about Psalm 82 verse 5, where it says, "Those people were kept in darkness and ignorance."

[00:55:00] So, I'm just trying to think about, like, the implications of the accountability, the people who are, uh, who were, um, kept in darkness because, you know, we have Romans 1 and 2 that talks about the importance of general revelation, but you also have Acts, um, 17:30, where it said that God overlooked the times of ignorance. And then you have, um, Matthew 10 and 11, where Jesus was talking about how it's better... The people of Sodom and Gomorrah will be better off on Judgment Day because the Pharisees who saw the miracles had the revelation of Jesus directly there. So I was wondering what your thoughts were on that. Yeah. How...

[00:55:44] Yeah. Oh, easy question, right? No, that's a lot. But you know what? I'm so glad because y- you, and you guys, all, all of you, I know you're gonna be doing this work of thinking through this. Wh- what are the implications? What is the ethical standpoint of this? W- what does this say about the character of God? What does this say about how we live our lives? And so I hope you're all taking all of that in in thought. Um, and is... And th- this is the thing. When, when we come to a passage like Psalm 82, if we're reading primarily, if, if we're thinking this is about rebellion, this is about worship, and a- again, I'm not saying that's not part of this, but when you're reading it through that frame, you might be missing those ethical considerations, the way that we live, the, the way that this shows the character of God.

[00:56:35] A- a- again, I, I do th- I do think I'm not saying anything against what Dr. Heiser said. I, I think that canonical context is there. But you have to frame it first and then understand h- how those things connect to what worship is. And that becomes even more interesting and more dynamic for our w- our life as Christians because our worship isn't just what we do when we go in church with others. It, it's not even what we do in a group of people. It is how we're living out our lives. Y- and so I, I, I hope this is really helpful to seeing these layers and how you can actually peel that apart. And yeah.

[00:57:18] So kind of in response to the earlier statement or question about, um, framing it as Elohim as opposed to humans, judges that are being, uh, addressed, would it-- And I mean, how does this fit in with frame semantics or not? Um, the end statement. 'Cause a lot of times people, if you wanna defend it, one of the first places you go, d-defend it being Elohim, is saying, "Oh, but see, they are your gods, but you'll die like men."

[00:57:45] So if you weren't gonna die like men before, then... And that gets attacked back in various ways. What about jumping, like jumping to the end, the last, where the psalmist speaks up and is bringing in new concepts? And I would say, is it through frame? Is that... Like, when he says, "You shall inherit the nations. Arise, do this," is he essentially saying, "Hey, ki-" bringing in a new frame or a solidifying frame by saying effectively, "Hey, God, just kick these jokers out. They're judged. You take over 'cause you're gonna do that eventually anyway." Like, does that kind of set a frame? Does that... You know what I mean? Or solidify one? I think I know what you mean. Okay. So a-again, th-this... It's tempting to think that a frame is just like this thing that's set in stone and this thing that, that you're bringing it in because you used a word. But when we communicate, we almost never communicate information that is just from someone else.

[00:58:44] Like, when you're teaching, you can do that. You, "This is, this, somebody said this, and somebody said that," and you're not bringing any new information. But when you're talking to someone, when you're communicating, when you're writing, when you're doing anything like that, you are literally bringing in new information. That's just what communication is and does. And so that's why I say it's really caref- we have to be careful to distinguish the background frame from the frame that is actually being spoken or written or whatever, communicated, right? So there's, um, there's, there's that distinction between, old information and new information. And we frequently, frequently combine frames. And so, uh, a-and, and this is, this is awesome for biblical studies and the Bible because the Bible is so often polemic. It is communicate-- It is bringing up associations from the culture, from the background, from things. It's telling us something new. Wh-why is it in Scripture? It's because it's communic-- It's, it's literally revelation because it is giving something new. So it is not just rehashing a frame. It is combining frames sometimes. It is, uh, providing information that is new. So I, I hope that answers the question.

[01:00:07] I've got two just really quick ones. One is, is, um, could, using your framework, could you use Ephesians, 3:10 where Paul talks about the, uh, mysteries of God being revealed through the church to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places and the Book of Job to strengthen, the view that Psalm 82 is actually talking about divine beings?

[01:00:34] And then in Psalm 82 when it says, when it talks about the princes, and fall like one of the princes, would the framework you use suggest that those princes are earthly or that those princes are other Elohim that had previously fallen and been judged and cast to earth? Okay, let me see if I've got your questions right. Um, uh, let me take the second one first. so the, the question of the princes, uh, are you asking if Psalm 82 is referencing a past event?

[01:01:06] Okay. Okay. G- okay, good question. No, I, I think that... So the person reading the Psalm 82 has a context. They have an understanding of who they are in relation to God. They have an understanding of what God has done. They understand that God uses nations as instruments of judgment, and then he will also turn around and judge those nations.

[01:01:34] So I think the, the understanding they would have with fall like a prince is within the context of God judging nations and those nations falling, if that makes sense. O- okay. Now, first que- I'm sorry, can you repeat this first question? Oh, okay. So- sorry, I, I think I remember now. Um, yes. So within-- So if you're gonna look at passages like Ephesians and other psalms and anything else, uh, what you would need to do is go to those and draw out the local frame. Then once you have done that, you have a frame that you can then compare with the frame of Psalm 82.

[01:02:13] Uh, and I, I, I have worksheets, you guys. So if you want worksheets, you can, you can go find my worksheets. They're, they're still in progress, but, uh, I, I have methods that you can actually look at the text yourself and say, "Okay, here's this, here's that, here's that. Suddenly, I have a complete picture of what's going on. I might not know what that frame is, but I see the constituent elements of it." And, you know, so by, comparing those things and, and the roles and the, directionality and things like that, really can help. Um, so within Psalm 82, you have two different things going on that are the same frame.

[01:02:50] We have God judging the judges. We have the judges who were supposed to judge the people. So that's what I mean by that nested hierarchy. There's the same frame going on, different participants, but you can recognize that those same frames are going on because of the participants, their roles, and the directionality of their action and relationships between those. So if you wanted to look at a passage from Ephesians and ask, "Well, does this accord with Psalm 82, and how does Psalm 82 enlighten Ephesians 3?" You could draw out the frames and say, "How are these related?" And, um, you know, so s- frame semantics is not the be all, end all of everything. We still need a whole bunch of intertextuality and, all kinds of other methods along with this.

[01:03:41] But what this does is bring out the way that we think and the general ideas of the passage and particular in the New Testament, how are they recombining these ideas? How are they bringing them together in the new revelation of Christ and the new revelation of the church and what that means for us? Because all of that does draw on the Old Testament. And so, yes. Uh, did that answer your question? Hi. I just had another question about the, the frames method, uh, that you're talking about here. You know, when I was thinking about it as you were presenting this, I thought of the phrase, uh, "Oh my God," how even non-believers today use that phrase and unknowingly evoke a Christian framework that comes before their fairly modern secular view.

[01:04:32] And I guess what I'm just wondering is, is as I was listening to this and piecing it together, it kind of sounds like this is tightly tied to the development of ideas over time. And if I'm understanding this right, would you say this is comparable to kind of like doing a, a geological, uh, record, like a dig over time to get the layers of ideas in the Bible? And, and then secondly, do you know if anyone's done the work to construct what that layer of ideas over time looks like in the Bible? Well, for your second question, frame semantics is used pretty particularly to frame out what does this word mean, what does that word mean, what does this passage mean. Um, and, uh, I personally think it-- we need to do a whole lot more along with those kinds of things of how do we see the development of ideas.

[01:05:18] And, it, it's a bit tricky because the Bible, we don't know what-- when each book was written and what each author would have known, would have been drawing upon. It's easy to think, "Well, of course, they had the whole Bible," but not necessarily. So, you know, it, it can be very tricky and, and I think only-- we can only get there to a limited degree because we, we do have a complete canon that should be read together.

[01:05:44] But, you know, th-this is similar. So for those of you who kind of wrestle with Dr. Heiser and his, Satan in Job, that idea, like, what is he saying there? Like, of course, that's Satan, right? Well, the New Testament takes those ideas there. And Dr. Heiser admits that the New Testament takes that there, which is why it confuses me greatly that people don't realize that Dr. Heiser actually said that. But regardless, what he was doing there was saying, we need to understand what the Book of Job actually says. What is the framework here? Is that framework actually the devil or what? You know? Uh, again, wish Dr. Heiser was here to talk about this, because, I do think there is a context of Genesis in the Book of Job early on.

[01:06:32] And so it can draw upon that. But again, participants and roles are different. So just because it could be drawing upon the frame of Genesis does not make the Satan in Job the serpent from the perspective of the author of Job. So that also can help to understand what Dr. Heiser is trying to do when he's really drilling down in what did the author mean in the Old Testament. Earlier when you described that a person in this culture would think about a cat this way and another culture think about a cat that way, how do frame semantics relate to memes?

[01:07:15] What a fantastic question. We don't have memes without frame semantics. We don't have memes without people being able to pull in context. Uh, so we don't have jokes without things like that. We don't, we don't have a whole lot of thing... And so that's why I say it- this is really rooted in the way we understand things and so on. All right. I have no idea what time it is, but it's probably time. So thank you guys so much.

[01:07:50] All right. Well, that was that. That was my conference paper presented in person to a room full of people and I've gotten a few additional questions since that Q&A as well that I will be tackling in future episodes, as well as just drilling down into this concept and the methodology and how can we develop it, especially in the framework of the church.

[01:08:16] Because believe me, I understand that I am coming at it from a very high level stance where I'm looking very analytically. But I really think that we can take the meat of this and draw it down into something that your everyday Christian can appreciate and understand and actually use. So I appreciate all of you guys listening to this and all of you guys asking me questions and interacting with me in different areas, really to help kind of see where the difficulties in understanding are so that we can work through this and actually come to a better understanding of the text

[01:08:55] So if you've got further questions, if you have anything that seems a little bit fuzzy, that seems hard to understand, or that we could work through a little bit better, please do let me know. You can find me on Facebook. You can find me in my biblical theology community at On This Rock. I will leave the link to that in the show notes. You can also contact me via my website at genesismarksthespot.com. And I really look forward to further discussions and thank you guys for listening as always. Thank you for participating in the conversation. But that is going to be it for this week and I just wish you all a blessed week and we will see you later.