In [Judges 5] verse 8, we are told
that Israel was left defenseless after having “chosen new gods,” or “a new god”
(ʾĕlōhîm ḥădāšîm), a phrase not otherwise found in the Bible.
These are not the stereotypical “other gods” of Deuteronomistic writing, but
the phrase does point to individual commitments between peoples and deities, perhaps
of the sort envisioned in Elyon’s apportionment of nations to gods in Deut
32:8-9, with Yahweh taking Israel (the closest comparison may be Deut 32:17,
also calling gods “new,” perhaps confirming the context suggested by Deut
32:8-9 . . . ). (Daniel E. Fleming, Yahweh Before Israel: Glimpses of
History in a Divine Name [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021], 127)
