Deuteronomy4:19

Translation

and beware lest you lift

your eyes to the heavens and see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the organized array of the heavens that look like a mighty army,

and [you feel] thrust away

to worship them and to serve that which YHVH (read Adonai) your ELOHIM

has divided

to all the peoples under all the heavens.

Paraphrase

Exercise caution lest, when you look up to the sky and see the sun, moon and stars which are organized in an impressive array that looks, in a way, like the army of heaven, you feel driven to worship and serve those things which THE ETERNAL AND PERSONAL GOD who is THE CREATOR AND OWNER OF ALL THINGS whom you have committed yourself to follow has made available for all the people on earth to see in differing ways.

Footnotes

1

This verb is singular, not plural like the verbs in verse 15 and 16. We should not make too much of this since the Hebrew Old Testament often switched verb forms or other grammatical forms during a paragraph or even during a sentence.

2

This word can be rendered “host, army, organized army”. It emphasizes the number involved and the organized arrangement of those involved.

3

This word means “to thrust away, cast out, banish, drive away, chase” it also came to be used of “to impel, driven, i.e. to motivate internally”. The latter is the case here, but its basic meaning of “thrust away” should always be kept in mind.

4

In Hebrew the forms of this name change to mean things like “your God, our God, my God,” etc. I have chosen to always render it as ELOHIM so it is easily recognizable to non-Hebrew readers.

5

This verb is usually used of things like inheritances or other things that are “shared, divided, distributed, assigned, allotted, divvied out.”

WHAT IS BEING COMMUNICATED HERE?

The simplest way to understand this verse is to say that they should not worship and try to serve the heavenly bodies which God has made available for all to see, except that not everyone sees the same stars in the sky based on what part of the earth they are located on. To claim, as Michael Heiser does, that this verse teaches that God assigned the non-Israelite nations to be under the authority and control of the demon-spirits of the Nephilim is a huge stretch.

Heiser’s interpretation is huge stretch first of all because he assumes the “sun, moon and stars” always refer to the spirits of the Nephilim who he says are demons and part of the Council of the gods. Notice that in this verse God says, “when you look up to the sky and see the sun, moon and stars …” this means God was referring to things that can be seen with the eyes. The demonic spirits which supposedly came from the killing of the Nephilim cannot be seen by human eyes. Therefore, the most natural way to interpret this statement is that God was talking about the physical sun, moon and stars.

Heiser’s interpretation is a huge stretch in another way – he assumes the word “divided” means God assigned all the other nations apart from Israel to be under the control and authority of the Nephilim. God could have said that He had “given” the sun, moon and stars to all the nations, including Israel, but that would seem incorrect since we don’t all see the same stars in sky based on where we are located on this planet. Therefore, God chose a word that would indicate that He had shared those things with mankind, but with some differences in what each group of people received, what they could see with their eyes.

The text says the sun, moon and stars were divided to “all the nations under all the heavens.” Does that include Israel or exclude Israel? It sounds like it includes Israel as part of “all”, and “all”. However, Michael Heiser assumes, based on verses about Israel being God chosen people, that Israel is not included in the “all” used in this verse. But this is a warning against idolatry, those other verses are about the method God used to reach the world.

The simple and natural interpretation of this verse should be chosen while the forced interpretation of Michael Heiser should be rejected as unbiblical and unnecessary.