1. O gods. In Canaanite mythology the bn ilm, “the sons of El,” (e.g., UT, 51:iii:14) are the minor gods
who form part of the pantheon of which El is the head. In the Old Testament the
term was demythologized and came to refer to the angels or spiritual beings who
are members of Yahweh’s court and do his bidding; cf. Pss 89:7, 103:20, 148:1
ff.; 1 Kings 22:19; Job 1:6, 2:1.
The phrase benē ʾēlīm recurs in Ps 89:7 and in Deut 32:8, where we
should read with the Vrs. lemispar
benē ʾēl(īm),
“According to the number of benē
ʾēl(īm),” as against MT benē yiśrāʾēl. There has been
some dispute as to what is meant here by benē
ʾēl(im), but Albright’s
contention that it simply means “stars” (From
the Stone Age to Christianity, p. 296) is confirmed by the parallelism of bn il with pḫr kkbm in UT, 76:i:3–4. Though the immediate context is
completely damaged, one can safely infer that the balance of “the sons of El”
with “the assembly of the stars” is the same as that in Job 38:7, “When the
morning stars sang together and the sons of God (benē ʾelōhīm) shouted with joy.” A Punic
inscription discovered on July 8, 1964, at Santa Severa, the ancient Etruscan
city of Pyrgi, contains the phrase šnt km
hkkbm ʾl, “(May) its years (be) like the stars of El.” Note the article and
the enclitic mem (discussed under vs.
6 below) in the construct chain, hkkbm ʾl.
This should help solve the dispute concerning the syntax of Phoenician Karatepe
i:1, hbrk bʿl, “the one blessed by
Baal”: the enclitic mem in Phoenician
is recorded in such phrases as rb khnm
ʾlm nrgl, “the chief of the priests of the god Nergal”; Donner and Röllig,
KAI, II, p. 72. (Mitchell Dahood, Psalms 1: 1-50: Introduction, Translation,
and Notes [AYB 16; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008], 175-76)