Michael Heiser Doesn't Have Deuteronomy 32 Right

 Michael Heiser's book "The Unseen Realm" has become a pivotal work in American Evangelical Christianity. Like him, I believe there is an unseen realm. It is more real than this one! Nevertheless, I think he is mistaken on some of his major themes, even if he is right on many of the details and intriguing ideas he describes. I can see why his book is extremely popular. 

One of his key passages, perhaps the one he relies on the most for his thesis, is Deuteronomy 32. 

7 Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations: ask thy father, and he will shew thee; thy elders, and they will tell thee.

8 When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel. (note that the Septuagint says "sons of God" and Heiser argues this is the correct wording. Some sources also say "Angels of God")

9 For the Lord's portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance.

10 He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye.

Heiser argues for the "sons of God" translation, and then uses that to say that this means that Divine Beings from God's "heavenly family" were given charge over the nations after Babel, and that these are the "sons of God" referenced. The dividing. according to him, was associated with the scattering after the Tower of Babel and is the one documented in the "Table of Nations" in Genesis chapter ten. This he claims, is a "disinheriting" of the other nations. They were turned over to the authority of other spiritual entities, in some cases wicked ones, while the LORD took possession of Jacob. 

I find this view of the text problematic for a number of reasons. Firstly, with the idea that the other nations were "disinherited" due to the disobedience at Babel. The text doesn't say so. It is imposed on it. If we were disinherited, it was due to the decision of Adam, who stood in for the whole human race. Surely Israel and Judah committed sins as egregious as those at Babel. Our behavior never changed, yet God never gave up on His people, even when He had to let them go their own way for a while. I think this claim also detracts from the work of Christ as the Second Adam (1 Cor. 15). There was nothing more to undo once Christ undid the fall of Adam.   

The claims is also disconnected with what the text says about other nations even within Deuteronomy. Verse 14:2 says "For thou art an holy people unto the LORD thy God, and the LORD hath chosen thee to be a peculiar people unto himself, above all the nations that are upon the earth."  The word "peculiar" there means "a special treasure". This verse sheds light on how the verses in chapter 32 should be interpreted. The other nations were not "disinherited". It was just that Israel was especially singled out. It was the "apple of God's eye" so to speak. 

Exodus was contemporaneous with Deuteronomy and it supports this view of the nations. Chapter nineteen says 

"4Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles' wings, and brought you unto myself.
5Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine:
6 ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation. These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel.

So it isn't that these other nations were "disinherited" or given over to fallen angels by God's decree. It was just that Israel was His focus, His special project. Why send the prophet Jonah to Nineveh if the only nation that mattered was Israel? 

Indeed the text of Deuteronomy chapter seven goes into some detail to explain the situation, and it makes it clear that the only nations being "dis-inherited" are those which God authorizes the children of Israel to dispossess. It explains the process by which Israel was chosen, and it mentions nothing about a dispossession of the scattered nations at Babel. It rather says:

6 For thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God: the Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth.

7 The Lord did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all people:

8 But because the Lord loved you, and because he would keep the oath which he had sworn unto your fathers, hath the Lord brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you out of the house of bondmen, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt

If there had been some sort of "disinheritance" at Babel, this would have been the perfect time to say so but it doesn't mention anything about that. Instead it reads like other people were also His, but Jacob was his special people, due not to any special traits they had, but because of who He is. This is consistent with the character of the God of the Bible in that our position is not due to our own works or our own awesomeness.

Is there anything about chapter thirty-two of Deuteronomy that indicates the division of the nations is the one referenced in Genesis chapter ten? Not really. They are both places where it mentions that nations are divided, that's about it. In chapter ten it is the clans of Noah who are dividing the nations. In Deuteronomy 32 it is the LORD assigning them their boundaries. The timing is off by about ten generations of very long-lived people. Of course Israel isn't mentioned in the table of nations. Jacob wasn't even born until long after Babel. The other nations mentioned in Deuteronomy as having specific inheritances aren't a part of the Table of Nations either. They came around long after. I am speaking of Edom, Moab, and Ammon. In chapter two God basically tells them to leave these nations alone, that He isn't going to give any of their land to Israel. Instead, they are to dispossess other nations as He directed. 

So the subject of nations having inheritances from God and being dispossessed from their national inheritance is discussed at length in Deuteronomy and it is in the context of then-existing nations, not hearkening back a thousand years or more to the scattering after Babel, or nations from the Table of Nations. I don't even think the text of Genesis 11 supports the idea that all the clans of Noah were a part of that scattering anyway. Most of the Japheth line seems to have broken off earlier and never went to "the Land of Shinar" in large numbers. There is just no reason to connect Deut. 32 to either the table of nations division of lands or a "disinheritance after Babel". It is writing stuff in between the lines. Any disinheriting going on is explained quite well by what is said in the rest of Deuteronomy in terms of the then extant nations, most of which were not even mentioned in the Table of Nations. 

Another theological problem with Heiser's view, especially for two-population models of early Genesis, is that it would leave many ethnicities in a no-man's land. The table of nations describes seventy nations which have sprung up within the last 10,000 years or more recently than that. It isn't inclusive of every nation on the earth. What of the "nations" of the far east, or sub-Saharan Africa, or the Amer-Indians? On what grounds were they "disinherited", or were they never in the club in the first place? Did they get assigned a fallen angel to rule them at that time or was it only the seventy nations mentioned in the Table of Nations? Heiser's view creates situation where much of the world is in limbo. Humans are in this undefined category. 

I think he's wrong about the "Sons of God" part too, and if he is, his take on this passage falls apart on that score too. I wanted to take one of his two main "go to" passages and show why he was it wrong on just about everything else he is saying about the passage. And if he does, then what are the odds that he has the more obscure stuff right?

I continue to advocate for a Christ-centered approach to early Genesis:

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