Verse explainer
Jesus quotes Psalm 82 to expose a logical inconsistency — not to claim humans are divine.
Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?
BSBJesus replied, "Is it not written in your Law: 'I have said you are gods'?"
The plain meaning
The religious leaders have just picked up stones because Jesus said 'I and the Father are one' (v. 30). His response is a tight legal argument: if the Hebrew Scriptures themselves call human judges 'gods' (Psalm 82:6) — and Scripture cannot be set aside — then why is it blasphemy for him to call himself the Son of God? The word 'gods' in Psalm 82 refers to Israel's judges and rulers, officials who bore God's authority and spoke his word. Jesus is arguing from the lesser to the greater: if that title could be applied to them without blasphemy, his own claim — grounded in his actual works (v. 37-38) — deserves a hearing, not a stoning. He is not teaching that all humans are gods; he is pressing his opponents on their own Scripture to show the charge against him doesn't hold.
The common misreading
What the commentators say
Clarke identifies the 'gods' of Psalm 82 as judges — officials called elohim in Hebrew — and notes this is essentially the only place that title is applied to anyone other than the true God. Jesus is using the word in precisely that judicial, official sense to make his argument: if the title fit them by function, the charge of blasphemy against him collapses.
Gill focuses on Jesus' appeal to the unbreakable authority of Scripture: the text called those rulers 'gods' because the divine commission came to them — they bore God's delegated authority. If the written word applies that title and cannot be contradicted, then Jesus' claim to be Son of God rests on a far stronger foundation than any human magistrate's.
JFB reads the term as marking those judges the 'official representatives and commissioned agents of God' — a role, not a nature. Jesus' argument is from analogy: he who is actually consecrated and sent by the Father (v. 36) has at least as much right to the title as officials who merely received a human commission under that Psalm.
The word behind it
Plural of theos, 'god' or 'divine being.' Here Jesus cites it from the Greek of Psalm 82:6 where it renders Hebrew elohim applied to judges. Thayer's Lexicon notes theos can denote those who hold divine office or authority by appointment. The word does not require essential divinity — context determines whether it means the one true God or a functionary acting in God's name. That distinction is the entire point of Jesus' argument.
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