Devil's Advocate perspective. I do not claim to be an authority, but ask to be persuaded by reason. The criterion of dissimilarity and the criterion of embarrassment suggest that doctrinal interpretations need to be questioned.
I am not arguing that absolute monotheism may not BE the truth; My question is what did the traditional bards and earliest writers of Hebrew believe in earlier centuries?
Bias: Our culture has an embedded theology favouring a monotheistic interpretation. Therefore our English translations fiercely adopt this position. Thus "eloheem" is ALWAYS "The [one true] God" in the KJV except when referring clearly to NON-Almighty personages. Scepticism is warranted when reading histories written by the victors.
Historicism: Strict monotheism among the Israelites clearly was NOT universal until the last centuries of BCE biblical history. Zealous monotheism appears to have evolved as a consequence of exilic suffering, arguing that such misfortunes were BECAUSE the people had NOT been faithful to the one true God prior to that time. There is no saying how quickly this view might have been imposed upon or adopted by all faithful Hebrews, if they ever were. Our texts are the official histories as told by the monotheists.
Ambiguity about the gods may have been tolerated in earlier times if the existence of lesser gods was taken for granted. YHWH as the supreme god among the COUNCIL of the Gods might have been the primary belief system in early Judaism without such faith becoming fiercely nationalistic and demanding the rejection and suppression of all other religious practices venerating other gods in the "pantheon."
High Places/במות bamot: the suppression of altars, stele (matzevah), asherah and sacred trees as places of worship began as late as Josiah (640-609 BCE), and appears to have persisted at least until the return of the zealous monotheists from Babylonian captivity.
Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely: We need not look far to see examples of strictly-dogmatic (or blatantly-heretical) interpretations being imposed on the faithful in order to concentrate political and religious power in the hands of an elite. We see many hands at work in the received scriptures, each with their own biases. How likely is it that the book of Job, for example, was NOT altered substantially through half-a dozen rewrites? Yet Job still retains Satan as a powerful spirit with his own agency challenging YHWH's claim to have a truly faithful worshipper.
Since it is certain that those who wrote the histories and edited the psalms in the post-exilic period were engaged in a revisionist history with a bias to ostracize and condemn all evidences of a more panentheistic understanding of beliefs of the people in relation to the gods, how likely is it that they refrained from doing so?
Therefore I suggest that the ambiguity of references to eloheem' in Psalm 82 may be a vestige of a far-more common heritage, a spirituality for many generations of the children of Israel that assumed Divine Councils as a norm, and freely-venerated several subordinate or rival gods.
