Saturday, September 21, 2024

Ronald Hendel on the Divine Council in the Book of Genesis

  

On Gen 1:26:


The easiest solution to these forms of address is to place them in the context of the biblical picture of God’s rule in heaven, where he is accompanied by his divine entourage, the lesser divine beings (see the “Sons of God” in Gen 6:1-4). According to Job 38:7, this divine entourage was present at creation, “when the morning stars sang together, and the Sons of God shouted for joy.” The divine assembly is familiar from prophetic visions, such as that of Micaiah: “I saw Yahweh seated on his throne and all the hosts of heaven standing before him on his right and his left” (1 Kgs 22:19). Similarly, Daniel sees God enthroned and served by a myriad of angels, and then “the court sat and the books opened” (Dan 7:9-10). As noted above, Isaiah sees Yahweh enthroned and accompanied by seraphim, after which he overhears Yahweh’s deliberations, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” (Isa 6:1-8). In this context, Yahweh is referring both to himself (“I”) and to the divine assembly (“us”).

 

Against this backdrop, the “us” in God’s speeches in Genesis 1-11 is best understood as referring to the divine assembly . . . (Ronald Hendel, Genesis 1-11: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary [AYB 1A; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2024], 129)

 

 

The twin qualities of divine knowledge and immortality (that is, the fruits of the two trees) are the hallmarks of the gods in ancient Near Eastern religions. In the Mesopotamian epics of Gilgamesh and Adapa, the heroes discover that they are doomed to human existence because, though they possess great knowledge, they cannot attain immortality. In both cases, immortality (or perpetual rejuvenation) is imparted by food by which the hero momentarily has access: for Adapa the “food of life” and the “water of life,” and for Gilgamesh the “plant of heartbeat.” These stories are thematically related to the Garden of Eden story . . . Similarly, in Israel immortality is a divine quality. In Psalm 82, when God condemns the other gods to death because of their injustice, he states, “Therefore, like humans you will die, / and like the princes you will fall” (Ps 82:7). In this unique instance in the Bible where gods die, they are compared to humans in their mortality. This becoming “like humans” is the inverse of the human becoming “like gods” in the Garden of Eden. (Ronald Hendel, Genesis 1-11: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary [AYB 1A; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2024], 165)

 

 

On Gen 3:5:

 

The plural translation kəʾlōhîm, “like gods,” rather than the singular “like God,” is preferable because of both the plural participle that follows, yōdə’ê, “knowers of,” and Yahweh’s later affirmation, “the human has become like one of us, knowing good and evil” (3:22). The plural of “gods” and “one of us” presumably refers to Yahweh and the lesser deities that accompany him, although the other gods play no active role in the story . . . (Ronald Hendel, Genesis 1-11: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary [AYB 1A; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2024], 181)

 

On Gen 3:22:

 

The “us” of this statement as well as the particle of attention, hên (“behold, look”), indicates that Yahweh is addressing a plural audience. As commentators have long noted, this utterance is best explained as an address to Yahwe’s divine entourage (e.g., Ibn Ezra; Miller 1978: 20-22). These are group of lesser deities that accompany or wait upon God in various biblical passages, for example, “Seraphs stood in attendance on him” (Isa 6:2), or “all the host of heaven were standing by him” (1 Kgs 22:19; see Mullen 1980). This plural address is also found in Gen 1:26 (“Let us make . . .”) and 11:7 (“Let us go down and confuse . . .”). These attendant beings are not mentioned earlier, as when Yahweh walks about the garden (3:8), but the standing of the cherubim to guard the garden (3:24) belongs to this notion of the divine assembly, which has various strata, including Sons of God (6:1-2) and angels (18-19). IN this scene in Eden, Yahweh deliberates in the plural, addressing his divine attendants, and announces the verdict that the humans must be expelled, lest they go from being “like gods” to becoming gods. The plural reference to “us” serves to emphasize the bounded category of divinity as well as the divide between humans and divine beings, which must not be effaced. (Ronald Hendel, Genesis 1-11: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary [AYB 1A; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2024], 193)

 

 

To Support this Blog:

 

Paypal

Amazon Wishlist (US)

Amazon Wishlist (UK)

Email for Amazon Gift card: ScripturalMormonism@gmail.com

Patreon

 

Blog Archive