Commenting on Deut 32:1-25:
The message in the Song is clear,
even if we don’t fully grasp all of the spectacular word pictures: YHWH’s anger
burns against his people, because they have enflamed his jealousy towards other
gods. . . . Here, there is mention of “'El cElyon” and YHWH
together—first, cElyon dividing the nations, and YHWH receiving his
inheritance (Deut 32:8-9); then, YHWH giving birth to his people, and )El
in the throes of labour (v. 18). . . . As of this portrait of malice in the
Divine Council was not clear enough, there is a textual corruption in vv. 8-9
which makes it abundantly so obvious. In the MT—and in many of our modern
English translations—we are told that “cElyon apportioned the
nations,” and he fixed their borders “according to the number of the Sons of
Israel.” This brings to mind for the astute ancient Hebrew reader that seventy
sons of Jacob—otherwise known as “Israel”—migrated to Egypt from Canaan to
escape famine (Gen 46:26-27), and there they “increased and swarmed and became
a great and mighty” nation (Exod 1:7). One so well read could also connect this
number to a list of seventy nations in Genesis 10, the descendants of Noah and
his sons—Shem, Ham and Japheth—who populated the whole world. However tidy this
alignment appears, it does not reflect the original text of this ancient hymn,
which also predated the tales of legend in Genesis and Exodus by centuries, at
least.
. . .
[Deut 32:7-9] is the same setting
against the backdrop of Psalm 82, where, in the Council of ‘El, the
gods are humiliated—“Sons of cElyon, all of you!” (v. 6). The
passage that continues makes better sense of this picture in which cELyon
is not affixing boundaries on the basis of the number of Jacob’s sons, but is
rather dividing the nations between his own—their inheritance—the sons of
)El in the Divine Council. This corresponds neatly with a well attested
tradition throughout the ancient Near East in which the sons of the gods
numbered seventy—a tablet from Ugarit mentions the “seventy sons of ‘Athirat”
(another name for ‘Asherah, the consort of ‘El); the Hittite Songs
of Ullikummis speaks of “the seventy gods.” In the following verse “YHWH’s
portion is his people, Jacob: his allotted heritage” (Deut 32:9). YHWH’s
inheritance that he receives from his father, )El cElyon,
is Jacob—his people, cherished and adored—a reflection of himself. Like a baby
that YHWH cradles in his arms, he gazes into the eyes of this precious bundle,
and sees his own face staring back at him: “a tiny man in his eye” (v. 10). (Kipp
Davis, God’s Propaganda: Pulling Back the Curtain On What the Bible Wants
You To See [Chilliwack, British Columbia: Paleographers Press, 2025], 153,
154, comment in square bracket added for clarification)
