Scriptural Mormonism: Aren M. Wilson-Wright on Yahweh's Familial Relationship with the Children of El in Deuteronomy 32 and Job 38

Saturday, March 15, 2025

Aren M. Wilson-Wright on Yahweh's Familial Relationship with the Children of El in Deuteronomy 32 and Job 38

Deut 32:8–9 also presupposes a familial relationship between Yahweh and the children of El. In this passage, the poetic speaker draws on the metaphor of human inheritance to describe Israel’s place in the theo-political landscape of the ancient Near East: in verse 8, Elyon distributes the nations as an inheritance to the children of El and in verse 9, we learn that the land of Israel is Yahweh’s “share of the inheritance” (ḥebel naḥălātô). Whatever Yahweh’s precise relationship to Elyon and the children of El in these verses, the language of inheritance implies a familial relationship between Yahweh and the children of El since non-family members were ineligible to inherit in ancient Israel. (Aren M. Wilson-Wright, “Yahweh’s Kin: A Comparative Linguistics and Mythological Analysis of ‘The Children of God’ in the Hebrew Bible,” in Where Is the Way to the Dwelling of Light? Studies in Genesis, Job and Linguistics in Honor of Ellen van Wolde, ed. Pierre Van Hecke and Hanneke van Lon [Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2023], 54)

The literary context of Job 38:7 suggests that the phrase ‘the children of God’ (bənê ʾĕlōhîm) also retains its familial connotations in this passage. The following 10 verses refer to three personified natural phenomena—Sea ( yām), Dawn (šaḥar), and Death (māwet)—whose Hebrew names are cognate with the names of three of El’s divine sons at Ugarit—Yamm, Shahar, and Mot. In verses 8–11, God describes the birth and infancy of Sea; in verse 12, he asks Job whether he has ever “caused Dawn to know his place” ( yiddaʿtâ šaḥar məqōmô); and in verse 17 he refers to “the gates of Death” (šaʿărê-māwet). Furthermore, verses 8–11 describe the creation of Sea in surprisingly naturalistic terms, which recall how El begot Shahar and Shalem in the Myth of the Goodly Gods. God begins this section of the discourse with a question: “Who enclosed Sea with doors when he burst forth from the womb?” (way-yāsek bi-dlātayim yām bəgîḥô mē-reḥem yēṣēʾ). He then describes how he swaddled the newborn Sea and placed him in an enclosure to prevent the fledgling god from getting into trouble: “When I made cloud his garment and darkness his swaddling band, and placed my statute upon him and I set a bar and doors and said ‘thus far you shall come and no further. Here shall your proud waves stop’.” (bə-šûmî ʿānān ləbūšô wa-ʿărāpel ḥătullātô wā-ʾešbōr ʿālāyw ḥuqqî wā-ʾāśîm bərîaḥ û-dəlātāyim wā-ʾōmar ʿad-pô tābôʾ wə-lō(ʾ) tōsîp û-pō(ʾ)-yāšît bi-gʾôn gallêkā). These verses depict God as a watchful, but firm, father who attends the birth of his son and reins in his more destructive tendencies. (Aren M. Wilson-Wright, “Yahweh’s Kin: A Comparative Linguistics and Mythological Analysis of ‘The Children of God’ in the Hebrew Bible,” in Where Is the Way to the Dwelling of Light? Studies in Genesis, Job and Linguistics in Honor of Ellen van Wolde, ed. Pierre Van Hecke and Hanneke van Lon [Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2023], 54-55)