Divine judgment means the judgment of God or other supreme beings and deities within a religion or a spiritual belief.
Ancient beliefs
In ancient Sumerian religion, the sun-god Utu and his twin sister Inanna were believed to be the enforcers of divine justice. Utu, as the god of the sun, was believed to see all things that happened during the day and Inanna was believed to hunt down and punish those who had committed acts of transgression. After she was raped in her sleep by the gardener Shukaletuda, she unleashed a series of plagues upon the whole world before tracking him down and killing him in the mountains. In another story, she hunted down the old bandit woman Bilulu, who had murdered her husband Dumuzid, and turned her into a waterskin. The Sumerians, as well as later Mesopotamian peoples, believed that all mortals went to the same afterlife: Kur, a cold, dark, cavern deep beneath the earth. Kur was miserable for all people and a person's actions during life had no impact whatsoever on how he or she would be treated in the afterlife.
The idea of a final readjustment beyond the grave, which would rectify the sharp contrast so often observed between the conduct and the fortune of men, was prevalent among all nations in pre-Christian times. Such was the doctrine of metempsychosis or the transmigration of souls, as a justification of the ways of God to man, prevailing among the Hindus of all classes and sects, the Pythagoreans, the Orphic mystics and the Druids among the Celts. The doctrine of a forensic judgment in the unseen world, by which the eternal lot of departed souls is determined, was also widely prevalent in pre-Christian times.
The Pharaonic Egyptian idea of the judgment is set forth with great precision of detail in the "Book of the Dead", a collection of formulas designed to aid the dead in their passage through the underworld.
Greco-Roman beliefs
The "Book of the Dead" (Nekyia) in the Odyssey depicts judgment in the afterlife by Minos, the "radiant son of Zeus" who in his mortal life had been king of Crete. Three egregious sinners are singled out for eternal punishment, but the theological implications of the scene are unclear. Plato elaborates on the concept in the myth of Er at the end of the Republic. Each misdeed receives a tenfold penalty, with rewards also proportional. Elsewhere, Plato names the judges as Minos and Rhadamanthys, but he also draws on the tenets of Orphic religion. A third judge was Aeacus; all three were once mortal kings whose excellence as rulers among the living was transferred to the dead. Vergil's depiction of the afterlife in the Aeneid is consonant with the Homeric view as well as that of Plato, and he makes it clear that everyone faces judgment.
The mystery religions of the Hellenistic era offered initiates the hope of salvation through confession, judgment, and forgiveness, as well as ritual purity. The Isaic mysteries were influenced by the traditional religion of ancient Egypt, which had symbolized the judgment of the soul through its weight on the scale of truth. Orphic initiates were buried with devotional texts that provided instructions for navigating the hazards of the underworld and addressing the judges; the soul who speaks correctly will be given a drink from the pool of Memory before joining the heroes who have gone before.
Judaism
Justice and righteousness are such essential attributes of God as to have led to the conviction upon every believer that every evil deed will meet with its due punishment. "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do righteous judgment?" (Gen. 18:25). Great catastrophes as Noah's flood, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the earthquake that swallowed up Korah and his followers, the plagues of Egypt and the evil that came upon other oppressors of Israel are represented in the Bible as Divine judgments. The end of history, therefore, was conceived to be the execution of the divine judgment upon all the nations. This divine judgment is to take place, according to the Biblical view, on earth, and is intended to be particularly a vindication of Israel.