A Divine Council in an Older Reading

A single phrase in the Song of Moses carries one of the more significant textual variants in the Hebrew Bible. The Masoretic Text of Deuteronomy 32:8 states that the Most High set the boundaries of nations 'according to the number of the sons of Israel,' but a Dead Sea Scroll fragment of Deuteronomy found at Qumran, together with the ancient Greek Septuagint, instead reads 'according to the number of the sons of God,' implying a scene in which the nations of the earth are apportioned among lesser divine beings under a high god's authority. Text critics generally regard the Qumran and Septuagint reading as older, and discuss at length what the difference implies about how ancient Israelite tradition, and its later transmitters, understood the relationship between Israel's God and other divine or angelic beings, a question on which the biblical text itself does not speak with a single voice.

Traditional Jewish commentary works from the Masoretic reading as received and does not treat the variant as raising a live theological question, while the passage's broader use of parental and eagle imagery for God's care (Deuteronomy 32:6, 32:11) is read across the commentary tradition, apart from the disputed verse, as among the most tender language for divine care found anywhere in the Torah's frequently severe covenant rhetoric.