Deuteronomy32:8

Translation

The Most High, in dividing the inheritance to the nations, in separating the sons of Adam, set up boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the sons of Israel.

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Paraphrase

When the Most High God divided the land and gave it as an inheritance to the nations, when He separated the descendants of Adam, He established their boundaries based on His plans for Israel and His foreknowledge of how much land they would need.

Footnotes

1

Here the Septuagint (LXX) reads “according to the number of the angels of God.” Most Bible scholars are in agreement that the Septuagint was not trying to provide an accurate rendering of the original Hebrew, or even of a marginal reading of the Hebrew, but substituting in a late Jewish concept that each nation had its own guardian angel. We don’t have the original available to us, so we are not sure what it is, but Bible scholars are largely in agreement that the LXX does not reveal the reading. The Dead Sea scrolls read “sons of God”, which could mean either human followers of God, or possibly angels. The LXX is misleading to take “sons of God” and render it specifically as “angels of God.” Whether the original reading was “sons of God” or “sons of Israel”, I think the implication is the same; it was referring to Israel.

DOES THIS PROVE GOD GAVE ALL OTHER NATIONS TO THE NEPHILIM?

No, it does not. The purpose of this passage is to express why God was angry with His people. The intent of these verses is to remind them that they had been given a special status among the nations. God wanted to use them as His specially chosen instrument to reach the world, but they had rejected Him, despite all His kindness toward them. Therefore, God would reject them. We learn later that He did this by sending them into captivity, some to Assyria and some to Babylon. But He brought some of them back from captivity and kept working with them.

Michael Heiser suggests that the Lord rejected the other nations altogether and therefore He gave them to the Nephilim so they could rule over those nations. That is an assumption on Heiser’s part. I am convinced we can rule out “angels of God” as a possible rendering of this verse, leaving only the options “sons of Israel” (Masoretic text) or “sons of God”, (Dead Sea scrolls).

Even if the original reading was “sons of God”, that would still rule out Michael Heiser’s Nephilim theory because the spirits of the Nephilim supposedly became demons. There is a difference between demons and angels, and we should not pretend that the Biblical text speaks of angels and demons as the same thing.

Notice that God also rejected Israel (Dt 32:vv 5, 19, 20, 23-26, 30).  Both Israel and the other nations are part of God’s possession. Both Israel and the other nations rejected God. Both groups were punished. And both groups are recipients of His grace and His offer of reconciliation through Jesus. God treated Israel differently because He had chosen Israel as His tool for reaching the others, as a kingdom of priests (see Ex 19:5-6 where Israel is described as God’s “treasured possession and Kingdom of priests”). Neither group was placed under the authority of the Nephilim; it is a big stretch to say so.