When the most high divided the nations as an inheritance, when he separated the sons of men, he fixed the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the sons of El. [1] YHWH’s portion is his people, and Jacob his share of the inheritance. (Deut. 32:8-9)
This passage attributes the division of the nations to “the most high” god (Heb: ’elyon), and says that they were divided among “the sons of El.” As in Canaanite mythology, El is the most high god who divides the nations. What’s truly striking is that in this passage, YHWH himself appears to be a son of El, and not identical to the most high god!
This becomes especially clear when read in the original Hebrew. We’re told that the most high god gave the peoples (Heb: ammim) as an inheritance (Heb: b’hankhel) to the sons of El, and that the people (Heb: ammow) of YHWH are Israel, who are his share of the inheritance (Heb: khebel nakhalatow). The same root words are used in both cases, indicating that Israel was given to YHWH by the most high god. This becomes even clearer when we realize that a “share of the inheritance” is always something given by a superior, never something taken by oneself (Josh. 17:14; 1 Chron. 16:18; Ps. 78:55; 105:11). While a few scholars have argued against this conclusion, their arguments are remarkably weak and fail to account for the clear parallelism between vv. 8 and 9. [2]
The rhetorical effect within the larger poem is to show that YHWH’s status as god of Israel is part of the divine order established by the most high god. YHWH has shepherded Israel from the beginning (Deut. 32:10-14), but Israel has abandoned this divine order and worshipped other gods (32:15-18).
The existence of these other gods isn’t in question, and it’s possible that several lower-tier deities of Israel’s pantheon are actually named in this poem as YHWH’s allies (32:23-24). [3] Their characterization as “not-gods” is parallel to the characterization of Israel’s enemies as “not-people” (32:21) — it’s not that they don’t exist, but that they are insignificant. YHWH’s declaration, “I, I am he, and there is no god beside me” (32:39), parallels other ancient Near Eastern statements about the superiority of one’s own national deity. [4] After YHWH defeats his people’s enemies in combat, their gods will bow down to him and acknowledge his superiority (32:40-43).
Thus, the poem in Deuteronomy 32 presents an Israelite pantheon in which (as at Ugarit) the most high god is El, who gave Israel to YHWH and the other nations to the other gods. In this view, YHWH is the best national god, but not the only one. This view is also found in several parts of the Deuteronomistic History (Joshua–2 Kings). The gods of other nations are acknowledged as real, but it’s wrong for Israel to worship them (Josh. 10:6; 1 Kgs. 11:33).
YHWH, however, is tied to the land of Israel and can only be worshipped on Israelite soil. When Saul pursued David to the borders of Israel, he cried out that he was being driven “away from the presence of YHWH” and forced to worship other gods (1 Sam. 26:17-20). When the Aramean general Na’aman converted to Israelite religion and had to return to his home country, Elisha gave him two cartloads of Israelite soil so that he could continue to worship YHWH (2 Kgs. 5:15-19). The foreigners transplanted to Israel by Assyria initially failed to worship YHWH, “the god of the land,” and were punished as a result (2 Kgs. 17:24-28).
YHWH’s authority outside of the land of Israel wasn’t total. When he promised that Israel would conquer Moab, but Moab’s king sacrificed his son to Moab’s patron deity Chemosh, the resulting divine fury drove Israel out — YHWH was defeated by Chemosh (2 Kgs. 3:17-27). [5] All of these passages belong to the first redactional stratum of the Deuteronomistic History, dating to the 7th century BC. [6]
The earliest Isra-El-ite religion
The ruler of the Israelite pantheon, according to Deut. 32:8 (and corroborated by the Ugaritic texts), was the most high god El. There’s much evidence that this was the god originally worshipped by Israel’s patriarchs. [7] In fact, this is evidenced by the very name Isra-El (meaning “El contends”). Unlike later in the Hebrew Bible, most of the theophoric names in Genesis involve the name El rather than YHWH — for example, “Beth-El” (house of El; Gen. 28:19; 35:7, 15) and “El-Elohe-Israel” (El, god of Israel; Gen. 33:20). There are other examples of “El” names in the patriarchal narratives (Gen. 16:11, 13; 32:28, 30, 31), in contrast to only one claimed instance of a “YHWH” name (Gen. 22:14).
Abraham worships “El the most high” alongside the Canaanite priest Melchizedek (Gen. 14:17-22). [8] Jacob blesses Joseph by “El the mighty,” mentioned separately from YHWH (Gen. 49:24-25; cf. v. 18). One of the accounts of Moses’ commission says that the patriarchs didn’t know the name “YHWH,” but rather worshipped him as “El the mighty” (Exod. 6:3). This appears to be a later attempt, after YHWH and El were conflated within the Israelite pantheon, to explain why the patriarchs worshipped God as “El” and not “YHWH.”
Recent findings from Tel Rehov, in the northern Jordan Valley, show that the cult of the high god El (as a separate deity from YHWH) continued in parts of Israel until at least the 9th century BC. [9] The Deir ’Alla inscription (KAI 312), dating to the early 8th century BC in the eastern Jordan Valley, testify to a belief in El as the leader of the pantheon at that date. [10] There is evidence from the biblical texts that El continued to be worshipped as the high god, distinct from YHWH, at Bethel well into the 8th century BC. [11] The evidence from personal theophoric names in the archaeological record shows that “YHWH” names grew in popularity, while “El” names became less common, from the 10th century BC onward. [12] This points to YHWH’s supercession of (and eventual conflation with) the god El.
How was YHWH introduced to the Israelite pantheon as their patron deity, if the patriarchs of Israel originally worshipped El alone? All signs point to the south, especially Edom and the Sinai peninsula, as the origin of YHWH-worship. The Hebrew Bible repeatedly emphasizes that YHWH came from Sinai, from Seir, from Paran, from Teman — all locations to the south of Israel (e.g., Deut. 33:2; Judg. 5:4-5; Ps. 68:8-9; Hab. 3:3; cf. Kuntillet ’Ajrud pithos B). An inscription from 18th-Dynasty Egypt refers to the “land of the nomads of YHW” as a place in the southern Levant, before “Israel” is first attested as a people group in the 19th Dynasty. [13]
Therefore, the earliest Israelite religion, practiced by Israel’s patriarchs, was most likely worship of the high god El. At some later time, the deity YHWH was brought in from the south (perhaps, though this is complete speculation, in a historical ‘exodus’ event) and became the patron god of Israel. YHWH was eventually conflated with El to become the most high god (this will be covered in my next post). To be clear, I am not suggesting the debunked idea of linear evolution of Israelite religion. There’s no reason to think Israelite religion was totally uniform, and there may have been groups that conflated YHWH and El from the start. However, it’s clear that there were groups — some of whose texts survive in the Hebrew Bible — that believed YHWH to be a second-tier deity beneath El.
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[1] The reading “sons of El” isn’t directly attested in any extant manuscript of Deut. 32:8, but it’s the best explanation for the widely variant readings that do exist: “sons of Israel” (MT), “angels of God” (LXX), and “sons of Elohim” (4QDeutj). Furthermore, this reading is indirectly attested in one of the Dead Sea Scrolls (1QHa XXIV 10a). For more information, see Aren Wilson-Wright, “Yahweh’s Kin: A Comparative Linguistic and Mythological Analysis of ‘The Children of God’ in the Hebrew Bible,” in Where Is the Way to the Dwelling of Light? (Leiden: Brill, 2022), 41-42. The fact that this verse was modified in so many different ways by later Jewish scribes shows how difficult it was to reconcile with Jewish monotheism.
[2] Michael S. Heiser, “Are Yahweh and El Distinct Deities in Deut. 32:8-9 and Psalm 82,” Hiphil 3 (2006); Thom Stark, “The Most Heiser: Yahweh and Elyon in Psalm 82 and Deuteronomy 32,” Religion at the Margins (blog), 16 July 2011; Chrissy Hansen, “The Many Gods of Deuteronomy: A Response to Michael Heiser’s Interpretation of Deut. 32:8-9,” ASRR (2022). The position that Deut. 32:8-9 distinguishes YHWH from “the most high” is by far the majority view among scholars; see Chrissy Hansen, “The Many Gods of Deuteronomy,” fn. 19.
Another fact which Hansen and Stark don’t discuss, but which strongly undermines Heiser’s argument, is the chiastic structure of Deut. 32:8-9 (see below):
A. When the most high divided the nations as an inheritance [Heb: b’hankhel], when he separated the sons of men...
B. ...he fixed the boundaries of the peoples [Heb: ammim] according to the number of the sons of El.
B’. YHWH’s portion is his people [Heb: ammow]...
A’. ...and Jacob his share of the inheritance [Heb: khebel nakhalatow].
Within this chiasm, “YHWH” is parallel to “sons of El,” not to “the most high.” This forcefully argues for a reading on which YHWH is a second-tier deity, given the nation of Israel as an inheritance by his father, the most high god El.
[3] Chrissy Hansen, “The Named Gods of Deuteronomy: Additional Comments on Deuteronomy 32:1-43,” ASRR (2023).
[4] See Thom Stark, “The Most Heiser,” ref. 1.
[5] 2 Kings 3:27 says that there was “great wrath” (Heb: qetseph gadowl) against Israel after Moab’s king sacrificed his son to Chemosh, using a word which elsewhere [except in late Persian-period writings] only refers to divine wrath (Num. 1:53; 16:46; 18:5; Deut. 29:28; Josh. 9:20; 22:20; 1 Chron. 27:24; 2 Chron. 19:2, 10; 24:18; 29:8; 32:25, 26; Ps. 38:1; 102:10; Isa. 34:2; 54:8; 60:10; Jer. 10:10; 21:5; 32:37; 50:13; Zech. 1:2, 15; 7:12; cf. Esth. 1:18; Ecc. 5:17). The parallel Moabite account of this battle, found in the Mesha Stele, also attributes Israel’s defeat to Moab’s patron god Chemosh. Later apologetic attempts by Jews and Christians to make YHWH the source of this divine wrath are utterly strained, as the context shows that YHWH was the one who promised Moab to Israel in the first place (2 Kgs. 3:18).
[6] Thomas Römer, The So-Called Deuteronomistic History: A Sociological, Historical, and Literary Introduction (London: T&T Clark, 2005), 91-104.
[7] For a lengthier summary of the evidence, see Mark S. Smith, The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel’s Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts (New York: Oxford, 2001), 139-145.
[8] The Masoretic Text adds “YHWH” before “El the most high” at Gen. 14:22, but this reading is not supported by the LXX, the Peshitta, or the Samaritan Pentateuch, showing that it’s a much later addition. Similarly, at Gen. 31:13 and 46:3, the definite article was added before “El” in the MT, transforming it into the generic noun “god.” As with Deut. 32:8, the very fact that these verses were edited shows that the references to “El” as the proper name of a deity were considered problematic for Jewish monotheism.
[9] Amihai Mazar, “Religious Practices and Cult Objects during the Iron Age IIA at Tel Rehov and their Implications regarding Religion in Northern Israel,” HeBAI 4 (2015), 25-55.
[10] This inscription, which is a story about the prophet Balaam son of Beor, sheds some light on the account in Numbers 22-24, which is also an account of Balaam’s prophecies and focuses more on El (whom he calls “most high”) than YHWH. Smith (The Origins of Biblical Monotheism, 146-147) argues that this text preserves the distinction between YHWH and El.
[11] Aren Wilson-Wright, “Bethel and the Persistence of El: Evidence for the Survival of El as an Independent Deity in the Jacob Cycle and 1 Kings 12:25-30,” JBL 138, no. 4 (2019), 705-720.
[12] Mitka R. Golub, “Israelite and Judean Personal Theophoric Names in the Hebrew Bible in the Light of the Archaeological Evidence,” ANES 54 (2017), 41.
[13] Titus Kennedy, “The Land of the š3sw (Nomads) of yhw3 at Soleb," Dotawo 6 (2019).
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