C HILDREN OFTEN ASK , “WHAT WAS THERE BEFORE GOD MADE THE WORLD ?” The answer most adults would give is that God was there. That’s true, but incomplete. God had company. And I’m not talking about the other members of the Trinity.
The biblical answer is that the heavenly host was with God before creation. In fact, they witnessed it. What God says to Job in Job 38:4–7 is clear on that point:
4 “Where were you at my laying the foundation of the earth?
Tell me, if you possess understanding.
5 Who determined its measurement? Yes, you do know.
Or who stretched the measuring line upon it?
6 On what were its bases sunk?
Or who laid its cornerstone,
7 when the morning stars were singing together
and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
When God laid the foundations of the earth, the “sons of God” were there, shouting for joy. But who are the sons of God? Obviously, they aren’t humans. This is before the creation of the world. We might think of them as angels, but that wouldn’t be quite correct.
The unseen world has a hierarchy, something reflected in such terms as archangel versus angel . That hierarchy is sometimes difficult for us to discern in the Old Testament, since we aren’t accustomed to viewing the unseen world like a dynastic household (more on that following), as an Israelite would have processed certain terms used to describe the hierarchy. 1 In the ancient Semitic world, sons of God (Hebrew: beney elohim ) is a phrase used to identify divine beings with higher-level responsibilities or jurisdictions. The term angel (Hebrew: malʾak ) describes an important but still lesser task: delivering messages. 2
In Job 38 , the sons of God are referred to as “morning stars.” That same description is found outside the Bible in ancient texts from the biblical world. Ancient people thought the stars were living entities. 3 Their reasoning was simple: Many stars moved. That was a sign of life to the ancient mind. Stars were the shining glory of living beings.
The stars also inhabited the divine realm—literally, in the sense that they existed off the earth. The ancients believed that divine beings lived far away from humans, in remote places where human habitation wasn’t possible. The most remote place of all was the sky, the heavens.
Morning stars are the stars one sees over the horizon just before the sun appears in the morning. They signal new life—a new day. The label works. It conveys the right thought. The original morning stars, the sons of God, saw the beginning of life as we know it—the creation of earth.
Right from the start, then, God has company—other divine beings, the sons of God. Most discussions of what’s around before creation omit the members of the heavenly host. That’s unfortunate, because God and the sons of God, the divine family, are the first pieces of the mosaic.
We’ve barely made it to creation so far, and already we’ve uncovered some important truths from Scripture that have the potential to affect our theology in simple but profound ways. Their importance, if it isn’t clear yet, will become apparent soon.
First, we learned that the sons of God are divine, not human. The sons of God witnessed creation long before there were people. They are intelligent nonhuman beings. The reference to the sons of God as stars also makes it clear that they are divine. While the language is metaphorical, it is also more than metaphorical. In the next chapter we’ll see other passages that tell us that the sons of God are real, divine entities created by Yahweh, the God of Israel.
Second, the label “sons” deserves attention. It’s a family term, and that’s neither coincidental nor inconsequential. God has an unseen family—in fact, it’s his original family. The logic is the same as that behind Paul’s words in Acts at Mars Hill (the Areopagus) that all humans are indeed God’s offspring (Acts 17:28). God has created a host of nonhuman divine beings whose domain is (to human eyes) an unseen realm. And because he created them, he claims them as his sons, in the same way you claim your children as your sons and daughters because you played a part in their creation.
While it’s clear that the sons of God were with God before creation, there’s a lot about them that isn’t clear. They’re divine, but what does that really mean? How should we think of them in relation to God?
The rulers of ancient Egypt were called pharaohs. In the language of ancient Egypt, the title was actually two words, per a-a , which meant “great house(hold).” The household concept for the ruling families of ancient Egypt was that of a dynastic bureaucracy. Pharaohs typically had large, extended families. They frequently appointed family members to key positions of authority in their administration. The elite staffing of the king’s governing bureaucracy typically came from Pharaoh’s household. They were administrators, not lowly messengers.
This concept and structure was well known throughout the ancient world. It spoke of layered authority: a high king, elite administrators who were often related to the king, and low-level personnel who served the higher levels of authority. Everyone in the system was part of the government, but authority and status were tiered.
Several Old Testament passages describe this administrative structure existing in the heavenly realm, as well. Psalm 82 is perhaps the clearest—and perhaps the most startling. As I related in the first chapter, it’s the passage that opened my own eyes. The psalm refers to Yahweh’s administration as a council. 4 The first verse reads:
God ( elohim ) stands in the divine assembly;
he administers judgment in the midst of the gods ( elohim ).
You no doubt noticed that, as I pointed out in chapter one, the word elohim occurs twice in this verse. You also probably recognize elohim as one of God’s names, despite the fact that the form of the word is plural . In English we make words plural by adding -s or -es or -ies (rats, horses, stories ). In Hebrew, plurals of masculine nouns end with -im .
While the word elohim is plural in form, its meaning can be either plural or singular. Most often (over 2,000 times) in the Hebrew Bible it is singular, referring to the God of Israel.
We have words like this in English. For example, the word sheep can be either singular or plural. When we see sheep by itself, we don’t know if we should think of one sheep or a flock of sheep. If we put sheep into a sentence (“The sheep is lost”), we know that only one sheep is meant since the verb is requires a singular subject. Likewise, “The sheep are lost” informs us that the status of more than one sheep is being discussed. Grammar guides us. It’s the same with Hebrew.
Psalm 82:1 is especially interesting since elohim occurs twice in that single verse. In Psalm 82:1, the first elohim must be singular, since the Hebrew grammar has the word as the subject of a singular verbal form (“stands”). The second elohim must be plural, since the preposition in front of it (“in the midst of”) requires more than one. You can’t be “in the midst of” one . The preposition calls for a group—as does the earlier noun, assembly . The meaning of the verse is inescapable: The singular elohim of Israel presides over an assembly of elohim .
A quick read of Psalm 82 informs us that God has called this council meeting to judge the elohim for corrupt rule of the nations. Verse 6 of the psalm declares that these elohim are sons of God. God says to them:
I have said, “You are gods [ elohim ],
and sons of the Most High [ beney elyon ], all of you.
To a biblical writer, the Most High ( elyon ) was the God of Israel. The Old Testament refers to him as Most High in several places (e.g., Gen 14:18–22; Num 24:16; Pss 7:17; 18:13; 47:2). The sons of God/the Most High here are clearly called elohim , as the pronoun “you” in verse 6 is a plural form in the Hebrew.
The text is not clear whether all of the elohim are under judgment or just some. The idea of elohim ruling the nations under God’s authority is a biblical concept that is described in other passages we’ll explore later. For now, it’s sufficient that you see clearly that the sons of God are divine beings under the authority of the God of Israel. 5
You see why the psalm threw me for a loop. The first verse has God presiding over an assembly of gods. Doesn’t that sound like a pantheon—something we associate with polytheism and mythology? For that very reason, many English translations obscure the Hebrew in this verse. For example, the NASB translates it as: “God takes His stand in His own congregation; He judges in the midst of the rulers.”
There’s no need to camouflage what the Hebrew text says. People shouldn’t be protected from the Bible. The biblical writers weren’t polytheists. But since Psalm 82 generates questions and controversy, we need to spend some time on what it teaches and what it doesn’t teach, along with other passages that inform us about the divine council. We’ll do just that in the next chapter.