Biblical scholar Michael Segal renders Deut 32:8-9 (DSS) as:
(8) When the Most High gave nations their
inheritance, and set the divisions of man,
He fixed the boundaries of peoples in relation
to the number of "sons of God"/divine beings.
(9) For the Lord's portion is His people Jacob,
His own allotment in Israel.
Segal offers the
following commentary:
These verses present a distinctive
theological-cosmological view of the origins of the division of the world into
nations and peoples. According to this perspective, this allotment was not by
chance or due to historical developments, but rather the result of a primordial
process in which each “son of God” was assigned a nation and a plot of land.
The theological picture here is of a head deity, named עליון , with other
subordinate, lesser divine figures, the בני אלהים . Scholars have debated the
position of Yhwh within this theological scheme, suggesting either that he is
one of the בני אלהים , or alternatively that he himself should be identified with
עליון . According to the first possibility, which I will label the mythic option,
when the supreme deity עליון originally distributed the lands and peoples amongst
the lesser divine beings, Yhwh, as one of these second-tier deities, received
Israel as his inheritance. According to the second possibility, the
demythologized option, when Yhwh, designated as עליון , distributed the lands
and peoples, he decided to keep Israel to himself as his own personal
possession. These two options offer significantly different perspectives on the
role of the God of Israel in the universe, and a potential distinction can be
(and has been) made between the myth in its original form, and its inclusion
within the context of Deuteronomy 32. (Michael Segal, Dreams, Riddles and
Visions: Textual, Contextual and Intertextual Approaches to the Book of Daniel
[Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 455; Berlin:
Walter de Gruyter, 2016], 145)
