12/15/2024

We’re reading through Revelation along with NT Wright’s Revelation for Everyone. These notes include discussions of topics of additional interest and attempt connections with more Old Testament material.

12:7-9

We discussed Genesis 1, day 4; the Genesis 3 serpent; Deuteronomy 32’s song, especially verses 8-12; and Psalm 82.

We read an assessment of the meaning of the Deuteronomy passage from the Jewish Publication Society Torah Commentary on Deuteronomy by Jeffery Tigay:

This means that when God was allotting nations to the divine beings, he made the same number of nations and territories as there were such beings. Verse 9 implies that He then assigned the other nations to those divine beings, and states explicitly that He kept Israel for Himself. This seems to be part of a concept hinted at elsewhere in the Bible and in postbiblical literature. When God organized the government of the world, He established two tiers: at the top, He Himself, “God of gods…and Lord of lords” (10:17), who reserved Israel for Himself, to govern personally; below Him, seventy angelic “divine beings”…to whom He allotted the other peoples. The conception is like that of a king or emperor governing the capital or heartland of his realm personal and assigning the provinces to subordinates. 

Deuteronomy 32 appears to look back to the Genesis 11 story of the tower of Babel and add a layer of information we didn’t get in Genesis about what was happening in the spiritual realm. As God divided the nations, he assigned each to a spiritual power.

Psalm 82 is set in a council, where God presides over these subordinate ruling powers and holds them accountable for failing to lead in the manner he has called them to.