The Divine Council was popularized by the late Dr. Michael Heiser in his book The Unseen Realm, first published in 2015 and expanded in a posthumous 2025 edition, as well as other books and numerous podcasts and videos. Though Dr. Heiser sadly passed away in 2023, the impact of his teaching continues.
Heiser was getting at something significant in the Bible for which there actually is a basis. Something which we cannot afford to ignore. There is a council of created beings in God’s heavenly court–a “divine council.”[1][1] [2] [3] [4] [5] They are under God’s control, carrying out his commands. Sometimes God even consults with them. They are not always in the foreground, but they are deeply engaged in God’s plan and in the course of history.
The term “divine council” came into widespread use in biblical academic literature in the 1980s following the publication of E. Theodore Mullen, Jr.’s dissertation, “The Divine Council in Canaanite and Early Hebrew Literature.”[2] Mullen delved into the Canaanite literature from a cache of tablets discovered in 1929 at Ras Shamra (Ugarit) and related the Canaanite pantheon assembled on the cosmic mountain to parallels he found in the Bible.
But it was Heiser who popularized and systematized it, spawning a whole cottage industry on the subject. Examples of these range from the fringe and fanciful to more serious biblical scholarship.
Among many other places, Heiser’s take on the theme has reached the masses in the form of the popular and excellently-animated Bible Project created by Tim Mackie. The appeal of the theme has cut across denominational lines, with advocates ranging from Doug Wilson to Frank Viola and recently even N.T. Wright. One can hardly visit a church of any tradition without meeting Christians who are at least aware of Michael Heiser or even enthusiastic devotees of his “Divine Council Worldview,” also the name of one of his podcasts.
As that label suggests, Heiser’s project was nothing less than an all-encompassing approach to reading the Scripture with implications for nearly every aspect of theology. While we could look at the divine council in Scripture from several angles, because Heiser’s version of the teaching is so widespread, his version of it warrants direct interaction. This is especially so because, even though his thesis has been widely popular, in-depth engagement has been sparse. Very little exists between full-throated approval and total rejection.[3] This article is a call to serious, deeper engagement with Heiser and his works.
Michael Heiser’s Unseen Realm was the conversation starter for the divine council in Christian theology, bringing to the forefront a once-obscure biblical theme. It is our task as participants in the conversation to engage, expand, course-correct, and address remaining questions.
The divine council is prominent in James Jordan’s lectures on the Book of Revelation.[4] I read Heiser having already gone through Jordan’s material, and I recognized familiar motifs and found new things to consider, but I thought that Heiser’s thesis could benefit from interaction from a Theopolitan angle.
Laypersons interested in Heiser’s thesis will not be satisfied with a book review or two accepting parts of his thesis, briefly criticizing others, and calling it a day. This has already been done. Even if one doesn’t think Heiser deserves more attention than that, the biblical theme of the divine council does. If Heiser’s conception of the divine council is flawed, then how should we think of it? How does it fit into firmly established Christian doctrine? How does it fill out the edges of our more exploratory theological endeavors?
Of course, it’s not possible here to examine every passage Heiser addressed. We’ll need to be selective. I’ll touch on some of the key issues of his view and its implications:
1. Michael Heiser’s Hermeneutical Approach
a. ANE Parallels and the Divine Council
b. Contextualizing the Parallels
2. What is the Divine Council?
a. Divine Council in the Bible and ANE
b. Angels or gods?
c. What is a god?
3. Biblical Anthropology
4. Telos of the Divine Council
5. But what about the Nephilim?
a. What is a Son of Elohim?
6. Avenues for Further Exploration
a. Psalm 82 and John 10
b. Deuteronomy 32:8, the Day of Atonement, and the Jubilee
c. 1 Enoch and Pseudepigrapha
Conclusion
We can be charitable toward Michael Heiser as a person while being critical of his writings. I don’t doubt that Dr. Heiser is at this moment rejoicing in the heavenly council and now knows perfectly what the council is and what it’s about more perfectly than anyone ever will this side of glory. So, I’ll begin with a word of appreciation for Heiser.
I appreciate his unflinching biblical realism. He did not try to explain away the strange things in Scripture as “merely symbolic,” nor did he attempt to downplay biblical accounts of the supernatural by easy or convenient solutions. He is to be commended for his commitment to the text of Scripture.
Neither was Heiser, as many academics are, inclined to grant the biblical text its meaning while relegating the “weird” to the realm of ancient myth. He insisted that the Scripture described literal realities in the world and beyond it, and his Divine Council Worldview attempted to come to grips with those realities. Heiser has done the Church a service in bringing the divine council to the person in the pew in a way that is both intelligible and relevant.
However, I have reservations (as many do) about Heiser’s hermeneutical approach. He attempted to read the Bible in an unfiltered and premodern way, encouraging his readers to “remove your filter.”[5] What does that mean? For Heiser, it meant greater reliance on ancient Near East (hereafter ANE) and post-exilic Jewish literature. That makes sense in his view because he believed the early chapters of Genesis were an exilic composition situated within a Mesopotamian cultural background.[6] In fact, what he was doing was exchanging one filter for another.
1. Michael Heiser’s Hermeneutical Approach
It is impossible to read without filters. They are not only necessary but good. It is only a question of which filters you choose to read through. Let’s examine what this means.
I believe Christians must read through the filters of 1) canonical reading, 2) the apostolic hermeneutic, and 3) the tradition of the Church. These filters can and do overlap considerably. This does not mean ignoring the historical setting of a text’s original composition, but Second Temple or ancient pagan writers, whether Near Eastern or Greek, should be far down the line.
While we can’t cover apostolic reading and Church tradition in depth here, essentially the apostolic example in the New Testament is the inspired example for canonical reading, and the Church sought through the centuries to emulate the apostolic method of using Scripture to interpret Scripture.
Canonical reading is much firmer ground than an ANE filter because we cannot truly enter into an ancient Near Eastern “frame of reference” the way Heiser attempted to do. While we may think we are putting on the ANE glasses, we are in fact putting on the glasses of modern ANE scholarship (the past 200 years or so). Neither can we assume that there even exists some monolithic “ancient worldview” to draw from.
a. ANE Parallels and the Divine Council
Heiser was using a methodology typical of scholars who rely heavily upon Israel’s ANE cultural context as the basis from which to interpret the biblical theme of the divine council. Mullen’s thesis set the tone for divine council investigation with his comparative study of the theme in Canaanite and Israelite literature.[7] Heiser similarly encouraged readers to develop “a theology of the unseen world that derives exclusively from the text understood through the lens of the ancient premodern worldview of the authors.”[8] Of course, that assumed a universal ancient worldview from which the biblical authors and the pagan world (and we) could draw upon.
Heiser speaks of the “enormous output—millions of words” that we have from the ANE.[9] However, the ANE literary evidence available to us is skewed by an abundance of Mesopotamian and Egyptian sources compared to the relative paucity of material from the many other ancient cultures over the millennia. For Canaanite literature, we are largely dependent on material from a single site. This unavoidably biases our picture of the ancient world in general.[10] The universality of the ancient worldview is far from certain.
Of course, because Scripture is dealing with the real world it does relate to its historical and cultural context. However, even disregarding for a moment the difficulties in determining that context, we need to ask how it does so. Is Scripture derivative? polemic? or is it the foundational truth upon which all other nations built their myths and religions?
Jeffrey Niehaus and John N. Oswalt offer some starting points to consider these questions.[11] We might say that the Bible and Israel’s neighbors shared a common culture, but we should not think of Israel and Canaan (or Israel’s other neighbors) as having some neutral universal background from which sprouted their respective religions.[12]
b. Contextualizing the Parallels
What do we make of parallels between Scripture and ANE literature? Let’s do a bit of canonical reading here. We must “allow the Bible to determine the starting place of the investigation.”[13]
We should notice first that Scripture informs us that Israel compromised and syncretized with their pagan neighbors (Ex 32:1–5). The Book of Judges is all about Israel’s tendency to be drawn away from the worship of YHWH to worship the gods of their neighbors or to worship YHWH in a way he had not authorized (Judg 8:23–27; 17:1–6; 18:5–6). Israel constantly confused the “lord” Baal with the LORD Yahweh to their own destruction and to the exasperation of the judges and prophets whom God sent to call them back to faithfulness (1 Ki 18:21; Hos 2:16).[14]
However, cultural influence did not run in only one direction. The culture of Canaan and Israel shared things in common because they had a common source: they all descended from Noah and bore the memory of Noah’s God. Their civilizations retained antediluvian memories of creation, of cataclysm, of heroes and spiritual powers. Their common culture stemmed from a memory of truth.
Even after so-called primeval history, Canaan received instruction in the Abrahamic faith. As Abraham traversed the land God had promised to him, he exhibited his faith by building altars, publicly calling on Yahweh (Gen 12:8; 13:4; 21:33), and by inviting Canaanite kings to join him in covenant (14:13; 21:27). The Canaanites recognized that God had uniquely called and blessed Abraham and understood that if they wanted to share in those blessings, they needed to be in covenant with Abraham and his God.
When Jacob and his sons went down to Egypt, the Canaanites evidently continued worshiping El Elyon (the Most High God) of Abraham and Melchizedek (Gen 14:18).[15] The Canaanite high deity, El, bears a name in common with the Hebrew word for God. But, over time, Canaanite worship mutated. El came to be conceived of as a bull, and he was paired with another separate deity, Baal, conceived of as his son.[16]
Abraham’s descendants, unlike the Canaanites, received not only a body of cultural memory passed down over generations but also periodic direct divine revelation. If we believe Scripture, we must believe that God really spoke to Abraham and Isaac, that the Angel of YHWH wrestled with Jacob and blessed him (and threw out his hip), called him Israel, and that Moses saw and spoke to YHWH in a flaming shrub. Israel’s children had unique prophetic access to a true and reliable record spanning millennia while those outside that stream of blessing had only the shadow of fleeting recollection passed down by tradition. In terms of the childhood game of “telephone,” the children of Abraham were the only ones who consistently had the operator on the line.
The assumption is, of course, that one is inclined to believe the claims of Scripture. If you are instead ready to cut the biblical text into disparate sources from vastly separated time periods, this argument will not be compelling. But Christianity is a faith that must hold that divine revelation occurs. So, let us take it on faith or not at all.
With all this in mind, I am not saying we shouldn’t use ANE literature in biblical studies (I will do so here!), but the ANE context must not become the controlling lens by which we read the Bible. Do not dismiss historical evidence for the sake of faith, but interpret evidence in light of it.
2. What is the Divine Council?
In the divine council, who are the councilors, and what makes the council “divine”? Does it refer to the council of the one God, or to a council of many gods over which Yahweh presides? The term is ambiguous and could be construed in either sense. In fact, I would argue (and I think in this I am agreeing with Heiser), both senses may be true.
a. Divine Council in the Bible and ANE
A biblical parallel to the Canaanite notion of the divine council or “assembly of gods” (‘idatu ’ilm) is found most clearly in Psalm 82 in edat-el. This is not only verbally similar but conceptually so as well. The Canaanite pantheon is a courtroom with the high god El at its head. Psalm 82:1 similarly declares that “Elohim takes his place in the edat-el…among the elohim.” This is not as straightforward as it may at first seem, but we can immediately see the parallels. It is significant, however, that the word for council, edah, refers most often in Scripture to the congregation of Israel (e.g., Ex 12:3).
The term most used in Scripture to refer to the divine council is sod (סוֹד). It is found only in Hebrew Scripture and has no ANE verbal cognate whatsoever. It is YHWH’s sod of which the prophet Jeremiah says, “If they had stood in my council, then they would have proclaimed my words to my people” (Jer 23:22; see also Job 15:8; Ps 89:7). As with edah, sod may also refer to the council of Israel (Ezek 13:9).[17]
Two of the most prominent pictures we have of the divine council in Scripture are God’s consultation with Satan in Job during the assembly of the “sons of God” (Job 1:6–13; 2:1–6) and Micaiah’s description of the heavenly scene to Ahab (1 Ki 22:19–23).
b. Angels or gods?
What sort of beings are in the biblical divine council? Heiser insisted that it is populated by gods.[18] He pictured a three-tiered structure of gods with YHWH at the top, the “sons of God” second, and angels occupying the lowest rung of the heavenly ladder.[19]
Heiser insisted that not all the gods are angels: “Angel” is not an ontological category but merely a functional one. Angel (malʾak) means “messenger,” and though angels are a subcategory of elohim, the word is essentially a “job description.” [20]
I think this is mistaken. While “angel” literally means “messenger” (and so even human messengers may in some cases be called “angels”), the biblical writers also refer to angels in an ontological sense (e.g., Lk 20:36; Heb 2:7–16; 2 Pet 3:22; Jude 1:6). Although Heiser is technically correct that the “sons of God” are never called angels “in the Hebrew Bible,” Septuagint Deuteronomy 32:8 and Job 1:6 translate “sons of God” as “angels of God,” while Targum Job 1:6 has “sons of angels,” showing that the Jewish translators equated the two.
The Scripture uses both words to refer to heavenly beings under God’s direction (e.g., Ps 29:1; 82:1–8; 89:6; 103:20; 148:2). I see no basis to suppose that angels, elohim, and “sons of God” refer to distinct ranks in the council.
c. What is a god?
Michael Heiser says,
The word elohim is a “place of residence” term. Our home is the world of embodiment; elohim by nature inhabit the spiritual world.[21]
The biblical use of elohim is not hard to understand once we know that it isn’t about attributes. What all the figures on the list [of entities referred to as elohim] have in common is that they are inhabitants of the spiritual world.[22]
Angels—in fact, all spiritual beings—are elohim due to the nature of what that term in fact denotes.[23]
Heiser’s definition of elohim can be distilled down to a simple equation of elohim with “spirit beings.” In fact, the one human he allows can be rightly called an elohim is the prophet Samuel, but that is only because he is a disembodied ghost (1 Sam 28:13)![24]
His conception of the “spiritual” clearly entails incorporeality when he says,
The Bible makes it clear that divine beings can (and did) assume physical human form, and even corporeal flesh, for interaction with people, but that is not their normal estate. Spiritual beings are “spirits.”[25]
This definition of elohim does not make a whole lot of sense even (or especially) through the ancient cultural filter by which he wants to read. To ancient pagans, gods are not pure spirit beings. They have corporeality, which is presented in the stories not merely as conditional or occasional, as angels are sometimes presented in Scripture, but as essential to their nature.
In the first tablet of Atrahasis, we find gods becoming weary of hard physical toil and so forcing humans to do their work. These gods fashion implements like shovels for their own labor (Atra-hasis 1.1–12). The god Elil resides in a house that can be surrounded unawares (1.72–84). In one Egyptian myth, Isis cuts off the hands of her son Horus and throws them in the Nile; in another, Horus cuts off his mother’s head.[26] The gods and goddesses of ancient peoples have sex; they procreate and give birth to new gods and demigods; those child-gods castrate their fathers.[27]
These stories make sense only in a worldview in which the gods are in some way limited by their own corporeality.[28] It is only by imposing his Christian and Greek philosophical assumptions about what a “god” is upon ANE literature that Heiser could even conceive of elohim as strictly spiritual beings.[29]
What then does el or elohim mean? I suggest that it means to be a council member.[30] This encompasses both angelic and human members. Thus, Moses the prophet of YHWH is elohim to Pharaoh (Ex 7:1), the prophet Samuel is recognized as an elohim (1 Sam 28:13), and Israel’s judges can be elevated to a position of elohim by Yahweh’s decree (Ex 21:6; Ps 82).
The singular Elohim, or El Elyon, God Most High, is head of the council. The appellative Elohim signifies that he is the one to whom there is no compare. In Genesis 1:1 he is called Elohim without reference to a divine council which he has not yet brought into existence. Genesis chapters 1 and 2 are the account of how he creates and builds his cosmic temple which is to be the council’s meeting place.[31] He then creates elohim, human and angelic council members, whom he invites into his work of ruling. Their status as elohim, council members, is derived from and dependent upon Elohim as head and creator of the council. He can expel them from the council or chastise them for rebellion or misuse of their place of authority (Is 24:21–22; Jude 6; Job 4:18, though spoken by untrustworthy Eliphaz).
As members of God’s council, angels can be and are called elohim (gods) in Scripture (Ps 8:5; cf. Heb 2:7). This does not imply that they are equal to God in any sense. This use of elohim is not ontological but functional. For Psalm 95:3 to say that “a great God (El) is Yahweh, a great king above all gods (elohim)” is not to suggest that there is a category of being called elohim of which Yahweh happens to be the greatest. Rather, it declares that the singular Elohim, incomparable in being to angels, is the sole ruler of his divine council. There is no ontological category in which God participates. He is God, and all gods derive god-ness from him.
The Most High God is the only one to whom worship is due. At no time in history was it ever legitimate to worship angels or other members of the council. This is why the covenant names of God are essential—they specify which God is Most High. To be ignorant of his name is to grasp about in the dark like the Gentiles. The nations needed light to know God Most High. It is not just any elohim, but specifically Israel’s God, Yahweh by name, who is Lord of Hosts, creator and king. He is the “The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” When we confess our faith, we confess that “We believe in one God,” namely: “the Father Almighty…in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God…and in the Holy Spirit.”
Heiser, for his part, insisted that the Most High God is “species-unique” and the only elohim worthy of worship. But his universal definition of elohim as merely “residents of the spirit world” creates a flat category of being that cannot explain how Yahweh is superior. Heiser ascribed Yahweh’s uniqueness to his “superior attributes,” which place him at the top of the “hierarchy” of the spiritual realm.[32]
However, if elohim means to be a ruler with standing in the divine council, then it can account for all uses whether referring to God or angels or human judges. Prophets are members of the divine council, as Heiser and others have noted.[33] They are therefore elohim.
The problems with Heiser’s divine ontology could be remedied by recognizing that the elohim of the nations are not being referred to as gods in an ontological sense but as rulers who are also objects of cultic devotion. Humans are “gods” in the ruling sense as well. This is shown by humanity’s creation as imago Dei and the implicit promise that the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil will mature them so that they may realize their role as God’s vice regents.[34]
3. Biblical Anthropology
Heiser’s definition of elohim carries implications for his whole thesis. Because he conceives of the Son, the second person of the Trinity, in the same category as angels, his view of the incarnation is that of a union between not only God and humanity but the gods and humanity. That is, in Jesus Christ human nature and spirit-being nature are joined. Jesus is both man and elohim who now sits on the throne of heaven where only elohim were before.[35]
Related to Heiser’s view of anthropology and Christology is his notion that freedom of will is essential to man being God’s imagers. While he formally rejects the idea that the image of God consists of free will or any other ability, calling it a “flawed approach,” he nevertheless insists that free will is part of the “spectrum of abilities” necessary to image God.[36]
In this section he makes a few problematic statements, among them the implication that human beings with “severe impairment” are unable to “represent God as originally intended.” He draws a distinction between the status of image and the attributes necessary to image God. But he places great emphasis on “imaging” as a verb and does not explain what it would mean to be the image of God without the ability to image him. Is an image who no longer images still an image? We are left in doubt.[37]
Humanity is the image of God. I agree with Heiser on the beth essentiae reading of Genesis 1:26–27, “Let us make man as our image.”[38] This means that the image of God is not an attribute humanity has but is what humanity is. However, I disagree that God is addressing the gods of the council at man’s creation or that angels are also the image of God.[39] Adam creation as image is unique. His sonship as God’s image anticipates the incarnation of God the Son.
Humanity was always intended to be God’s divine council. Sin temporarily set back the plan, but it could not ultimately frustrate it. Now Jesus Christ, the second Man (1 Cor 15:45–47), is firstborn both of creation and from the dead. He is heir to all things in heaven and on earth, and all things have been subjected to him (Matt 28:18; Col 1:15–20; 2:15; Heb 2:5–11). Because all things are made for Christ, that means that ultimately all things are made for man who was made only for a little while to be lower than angels (Ps 8:5).
4. Telos of the Divine Council
What sorts of beings God created in his image is a crucial question to understand God’s intent for the divine council.
Heiser understood this, and so argued that both men and gods are “imagers of God.”[40] He argued that since humanity and the elohim share a capacity for rulership, the essential trait to imaging God, both are equally image-bearers.
Consequently, Heiser concluded that men and gods must each have a permanent place in this council and that they share a familial bond as those who are called “sons of God”: “The two families and councils merge.”[41] He regarded the heavenly sons of God as more natural sons because they are of a similar bring to God (pure spirit—elohim), while the human earthly sons of God are so-called only by adoption.
Angels will not cease to exist. No doubt they continue to have a place in the heavenly court as flaming ministers of God (Heb 1:4). However, they have relinquished their former ruling positions in the divine council because the saints—the holy ones in Jesus Christ, the crucified and resurrected man—have taken their place.[42]
Heiser placed great emphasis on the cosmic mountain, the mount of assembly, which is the meeting place of the elohim.[43] What he failed to recognize was that our assemblage at that mountain is not something in the distant future. He never cited Hebrews 12 in The Unseen Realm, and in other writings, he cites it only in passing. That is astonishing, since it is the climactic passage of the book:
But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel (Heb 12:22–24, emphasis added)
Hebrews declares that our access and approach to the divine council, “the assembly of the firstborn enrolled in heaven,” is not a future hope—it is a present reality for the Church of Jesus Christ. The whole message of Hebrews is that Jesus, a man like us, is superior to all other beings, including angels. He is the heir of all things in heaven and on earth. He is also our great high priest by whose flesh we have access to the throne room of God—not a shadowy copy of the throne room as Israel had but the real deal (Heb 9:23–24; 10:20).
There is a liturgical dimension to this. You approach this throne room whenever you pray. However, you enter it especially when you gather as a congregation as an edah, a sod, a council of elohim (rulers) at this mountain of assembly (har mo’ed) in the name of Jesus Christ. What does this look like? It looks like the congregation of believers every Lord’s Day before the Word and the table, interceding in prayer for the world before the throne of heavenly grace. All who are baptized into his name are members of this council, and all of these are called out to meet as his ruling body and to wage war in heavenly places (Eph 6:12).
This is why Hebrews also exhorts its readers not to neglect meeting together (Heb 10:25). You are a council member; it is your job to assemble. It is why the author of Hebrews exhorts his readers to maturity, to the sharpening of their powers to “distinguish good from evil” (Heb 5:14), which is the wisdom to rule (Gen 3:21–22; 1 Ki 3:9). For you will judge even angels (1 Cor 6:3).
Moses’ fervent wish was that “all of YHWH’s people were prophets.” That is, members of the divine council (Num 11:16–30). God was pleased to grant his desire at Pentecost when the Holy Spirit was poured out in abundance upon the whole Church (Ac 2:16–18).
5. But what about the Nephilim?
Finally, we come to the nephilim, destroyers of worlds and derailers of Bible studies worldwide.
Because popular accounts of the divine council are so wrapped up with 1 Enoch and its reading of Genesis, one can hardly talk about the divine council without addressing the giant in the room. And it does lead to issues of greater importance. So let’s have at it.
The word nephilim is most likely derived from the Hebrew nphl, which means “to fall.”[44] Michael Heiser acknowledged that thisis grammatically feasible, but he argued instead that it was derived from the Aramaic naphiyla, which he says simply means “giant.” He reasoned that a Hebrew source of nphl, “to fall,”
fails to explain everything [i.e., beside the grammar]: the original Mesopotamian context, the Second Temple Jewish recognition of that context, the connection of the term to Anakim giants…, and the fact that the Septuagint translators translated the word as “giants,” not “fallen ones.”
We cannot address every objection here, but I will highlight that Heiser’s position is dependent on his assumption that Genesis 6 was composed in Babylonian exile where Aramaic was the lingua franca.[45] As late as Hezekiah’s reign before exile in the seventh century BC, the common Judahite did not understand Aramaic (2 Ki 18:26).
The Aramaic naphiyla is attested several places in the literature, mostly in the Targumim (Aramaic paraphrases of Scripture) at Qumran. These would be very late witnesses for derivation in Genesis 6 or Numbers 13, even if we were inclined to grant a Babylonian exilic composition for those texts.[46]
The word also occurs in several Aramaic fragments of a “Book of Giants” found at Qumran. Surprisingly, one fragment seems to refer to the nephilin and the giants as two distinct groups rather than as identical. The “giants” in these fragments are not called nephilin but gibbarin,[47] a word cognate to the Hebrew gibborim, which simply refers to mighty warriors (King David’s warriors are a host of gibborim, 2 Sam 10:7). In short, some nephilim may have been giants, but the word does not necessarily mean that.
How did the nephilim come to be? Genesis 6 suggests the possibility, though it does not state explicitly, that they are the product of union between the “sons of God” and the “daughters of men.” The identity of these two groups has been the topic of endless debate. We will not settle it here, but I suggest a few directions.
a. What is a Son of Elohim?
A son of Elohim is an elohim. The sons of God are rulers by right and members in the council. Again, this may include both angels and humans but with a caveat. Adam was a son of God (Lk 3:38), specially created by God to be his image, but he was expelled from the sanctuary because of his transgression (Gen 3:24). Being separated from God’s presence meant that he forfeited his place in the council, and the world was placed under the rule of the serpent and other angels (Gen 3:22–24; Deut 32:8; 2 Cor 4:4; Rev 12:7–10).
God’s plans for humanity were not frustrated. He did not have to switch to Plan B; he always intended for man to stand in council with him and for the Son to take on humanity, and so he progressively guided humanity to maturity throughout history. We first see this with Noah, who is given the kingly authority to exercise capital punishment, then with Abraham, the first to be called a prophet (one with access to the council), and culminating with Israel, whom YHWH calls his “firstborn son.”
Genesis 6 takes place before humanity’s restoration to the council commences. It presents a narrative contrast of two groups: the “daughters of humanity” (benoth ha’adam) and the “sons of God” (bene ha’elohim).
Ha-adam here denotes all of humanity who multiplies over the face of the earth and begets daughters. The “sons of God” are a sudden alien presence in the text. Because we find no obvious clues as to their identity in the immediate context, we must bring the rest of Scripture to bear.[48] Elsewhere in Hebrew Scripture, the “sons of God” and closely similar terms refer to angels (DSS Deut 32:8; Job 1:6; 2:1; 38:1; Ps 89:7).[49] The “sons of God” as angels is also the oldest known identification, with witnesses to this reading uniform from the Septuagint in the third century BC (which translates the phrase in Genesis 6 as “angels of God”) until Julius Africanus sometime in the second or third centuries AD.[50] Therefore, I believe the term “the sons of God” here, as elsewhere, refers to angels.
Contrary to most angelic interpretations of Genesis 6, I don’t believe it speaks of literal sexual relations between angels and human women. Instead, it is describing cultic unions in sexual terms, something Scripture does frequently (Jer 3:2; Ezek 16:15–41). An ANE analogue can be found in the cultic rituals of sacred marriage or divine marriage in which priestesses were installed as “the wife of the god” they served (Sumerian DAM.DINGER).[51] Heiser offers the metaphorical view as a seemingly legitimate option and has no criticism of it, but he never mentions it again.[52]
In this view, the nephilim are people dedicated to the gods, possibly the offspring of priestesses regarded as married to their deity. Two biblical analogues for this are Samson and Shamgar. Samson is a Nazirite dedicated to YHWH from the womb, and his parentage is ambiguous in the narrative. He is the biological son of Manoah, but his birth results from his mother meeting with the angel (Judg 13).[53] Shamgar is the son of the Canaanite goddess Anat (Judg 3:31; 5:6). Both Shamgar and Samson performed prodigious acts of war against the Philistines from which came Goliath and his ilk (1 Sam 17:4; 1 Chr 20:4–8).
The cultic marriage view has these advantages:
- It establishes a pattern of speaking of idolatry in marital terms (e.g., Israel’s “yoking” to Baal of Peor; Num 25:1–5; Ezek 23; Hos 1:2).
- It establishes a theme of intermarriage in the world, as it may suggest intermarriage with Cain’s line in an indirect way (i.e., Seth giving his daughters to idolatrous Cain). Intermarriage with idolaters leads one into idolatry (Num 25:1–5; Deut 7:3–4; 1 Ki 11:1–8; Neh 13:23–27).
- It establishes the pattern of abomination of desolation taking place before exile from the land (in this case from the world).
The final detestable act prior to God’s announcement of desolation is always done by the people of God in the sanctuary. This suggests a cultic sin by the line of Seth in the forecourt of the garden sanctuary (the land of Eden). Giving daughters to marry demons would certainly qualify.
In Genesis, the announcement of desolation is bookended by the two accounts of the sons of God and daughters of man. God declares that his Spirit will no longer dwell among humanity (i.e., he will desert his sanctuary). The day of desolation is set 120 years from the announcement, at which time the flood came (Gen 6:3). During this time “God waited with patience” (1 Pet 3:20) and at the desolation delivered righteous Noah and his family.
The pattern in Genesis 6 is typical of the destruction of Solomon’s temple (Ezek 5:11; 8:14–18) as well as the second temple in AD 70 (Matt 24:15–16). It is in accordance with this pattern that Jesus and the New Testament authors (most notably Peter and Jude) take up the language of antediluvian cosmic corruption and the Noahic deluge (Matt 24:37–38; Heb 11:7; 1 Pet 3:20; 2 Pet 2:5; Jude 1:6, 14).
The judgment upon that generation for rejecting their Messiah and his Spirit-filled people would consume the whole symbolic cosmos of the temple administration, just as the flood removed Eden from the world. Only the temple of Christ’s body, the Church, would remain.
6. Avenues for Further Exploration
It is impossible even to mention all the passages and themes we could explore further from a divine council perspective. However, a few of them warrant at least a word, because they are integral to Michael Heiser’s thesis. I plan to delve into these and other themes in much greater depth in a forthcoming book about the divine council.
a. Psalm 82 and John 10
Psalm 82 was Heiser’s lynchpin passage and entryway into his divine council worldview. It is also quoted by Jesus in John 10:34–38. Untangling the issues in these two passages requires more extensive exegesis than we can do here. I will here say that I agree with Heiser that Jesus must be saying something other than, “God called humans gods, so I can call myself one too.”
Contra Heiser, I believe Jesus is saying much more than “I am actually an elohim like the other gods, so I can rightly be called one.”[54] This seems to me just as unsatisfying an interpretation as the one he criticizes.
I believe that Psalm 82 employs the familiar divine council type-scene, but it is Israel’s human council being addressed. Jesus is in fact claiming identity with YHWH, who is head of the council, while prosecuting his case against the rebellious Jews who are, like the Israelite council in Psalm 82, under God’s judgment.
b. Deuteronomy 32:8, the Day of Atonement, and the Jubilee
I am in general agreement with Heiser’s reading of Deuteronomy 32:8 that the inheritance of the nations is allotted according to the “number of sons of God” rather than “sons of Israel.” His article arguing for the DSS “sons of God” and LXX “angels of God” reading over the MT “sons of Israel” is compelling.[55] However, he does not go far enough. In the passage, Moses declares that YHWH has chosen Jacob as his portion and inheritance while the other nations have been given to the “sons of God.” This is a status statement, but it is not how things were originally intended to be.
Psalm 82:8 says that God “shall inherit all the nations.” The allotment of nations to angelic rulers is temporary. This is suggested in Israel’s feast of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, especially in the Jubilee years.
When the sanctuary was cleansed every forty-ninth year (a seventh seven Sabbath), on the new year of the fiftieth year, allotted portions of the promised land that had been bought and sold were to return to their ancestral owners (Lev 25:8–13). Jesus came to declare the great Jubilee (Lk 4:17–21) which includes the reversion of the whole world to its rightful owners, YHWH and his image: humanity renewed in Jesus Christ.
The reversion of the rule of nations is not a later contingency but part of God’s original redemptive program to restore and glorify his created order.
c. 1 Enoch and Pseudepigrapha
Questions of the nephilim invariably lead to issues of pseudepigraphical literature like 1 Enoch, a major source for Heiser and others for Genesis 6 interpretation. 1 Enoch is a compilation of five distinct books, the earliest of which is usually dated to between the second and third centuries BC.[56] Though originally composed in Aramaic, we have only a handful of Aramaic fragments of 1 Enoch from Qumran. The full text is extant only in Ethiopic which is itself a translation from a Greek text.[57]
Is Enoch among the canonical books? Heiser said no, and I agree.[58] However, he provided no guardrails for what to accept or reject as authoritative in 1 Enoch. Heiser reasoned that because 1 Enoch informed the “intellectual worldview” of Jude and Peter, which are inspired books, we must accept it as reliable.[59] The non-canonical status he ascribes to 1 Enoch thus becomes a distinction without a practical difference. My concern is that those following Heiser as a guide to Enochic literature will tend to treat it just as they would canonical writings–entirely authoritative.
Jude and Peter do make use of 1 Enoch, but their usage of 1 Enoch is limited and polemic, employing a book that their opponents likely held in high regard.[60] They do not mention sexual union between angels and human women nor any resulting miscegenation resulting in giants.
Conclusion
We need to strip away the sensationalism so often associated with this topic to see what the Bible tells us concretely and how we are to live in light of it. That doesn’t mean we want to “disenchant” an enchanted world but that we want to live in God’s reality.
In the Old Testament, angels were “sons of God.” The use of that term shifts squarely to humanity after the incarnation. This shift in language reflects the shift in history.
Now, the peacemakers, those of the resurrection, and all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God (Matt 5:9; Lk 20:36; Rom 8:14). If you are united to the Son of God, then you are sons of God (Gal 3:26). In Jesus Christ, God has turned the cosmos and the divine council upside down. He has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate (Lk 1:52).
This is our present reality, but it is not yet complete; we live in hope of its fulfillment. That will come when heaven and earth are finally united, when Jesus returns with the shout of the archangel and the bodies of the righteous dead spring up anew and the living join them to meet our Lord in the glory cloud (1 Thess 4:17; cf. LXX 2 Kgdms 22:12).
In conclusion, we can understanding of the divine council in this way:
The divine council is the heavenly royal court that surrounds the throne of God, carrying out his directions in the universe, and even offering counsel as a function of their office.
The Old Testament most often shows the divine council as an assembly of angels, sometimes even called gods, around God. However, the creation of man as God’s image indicates that humanity was always intended to sit on the council and even to supersede the angels. Through his sin, Adam forfeited his position and was banished from Eden, the council’s meeting place, and creation was given over to the rule of rebel angels.
God’s purpose remained firm: he would bring humanity to maturity until a man could wrest control of heaven and earth from the rule of Satan. While God guided humanity along, welcoming privileged prophets into the council, his purposes reached fruition in the Son of God who became man. By Christ’s cross, the rule of rebellious powers is broken, and all things are made right before God (Col 1:15–20; 2:15).
Now, a man who is also God sits at the head of the divine council. Humanity is elevated above the angels in Jesus Christ, and the saints have been seated in heavenly places to rule with him as his new council (Eph 2:6).[6] [7] [8] [9] [10]
I hope this study has opened avenues to engage Dr. Heiser’s thesis both critically and respectfully, and, more importantly, to read Scripture more deeply. The divine council is an enormous topic that is worthy of attention from many biblical scholars as we explore its myriad facets. While it is not perhaps the controlling lens by which we read all Scripture, it is a prevalent theme that often lies closely in the background of the text.
Heiser has done a great deal to shine a light on that background. Once seen it cannot be unseen. But let us see more clearly. May God grant that those who take up the theme bring the divine council into ever clearer focus.
Christopher Kou completed the Theopolis Institute intensive course program in 2017. He is currently pursuing an Master of Arts in Biblical Studies at Reformed Theological Seminary. He and his wife, Ellyn, live in Birmingham, AL.
NOTES
[1] The divine council is not to be confused with the intra-Trinitarian “eternal counsel” of God’s will in Reformed doctrine, e.g., Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: God and Creation (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004), 337ff, nor, similarly, the “pre-eternal council” in patristic writings and Orthodox theology; Hilarion Alfeyev, Doctrine and Teaching of the Orthodox Church (Yonkers, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2012), 220.
[2] E. Theodore Mullen, Jr., The Divine Council in Canaanite and Early Hebrew Literature, Harvard Semitic Monographs, No. 24 (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1980).
[3] Critical treatments include Heath Henning, The Unbiblical Realm (Troy, WI: TruthWatchers, 2023) and Thomas A. Howe, The Unseemly Realm (Self-published, 2024).
[4] Meredith Kline also employed the language and imagery of the divine council in Images of the Spirit, (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 1999), 58–63.
[5] Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm (Bellingham, WA: Lexham, 2015), 14–15.
[6] Heiser did not subscribe to the documentary hypothesis as such but believed that Genesis 1–11 was composed during Judah’s exile.
[7] Other ancient cultures also have their versions of the divine council.
[8] Heiser, Unseen Realm, 13.
[9] Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Expanded Edition (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2025), 6.
[10] Noel K. Weeks “The Bible and the ‘Universal’ Ancient World: A Critique of John Walton.” WTJ 78.1 (2016): 1–28. His critique can apply to the methodology of many scholars who assume universality in ANE worldviews.
[11] Jeffrey Niehaus, Ancient Near Eastern Themes in Biblical Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 2008); John N. Oswalt, The Bible among the Myths (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2009), especially chapter 5. Their books leave one thirsting for more detailed study from their Scripture-first perspective.
[12] The nineteenth-century biblical philologist Francis Brown noted how the Hebrew Bible is marked more by its dissimilarity to the ANE cultures than by its parallels in Assyriology: Its use and abuse in Old Testament study, (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1885), 45–49.
[13] Oswalt, Bible among Myths, 16–17.
[14] It shouldn’t surprise us to find artifacts in which the name of YHWH used in pagan ways. For instance, the goddess Asherah was apparently associated with Yahweh as his consort in some Israelite cults. She was likely imported from the Canaanite cult of El. John Day, Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan (London: Sheffield, 2000), 59–61.
[15] When Israel enters Canaan, Adoni-zedek, king of Jerusalem and possible descendant of Melchizedek, opposes them and thus opposes YHWH (Josh 10:1–5).
[16] CTA 2:3:16; 3:4:7; 6:4:34; 14:2:59; 17:1:24, translated in John C. L. Gibson and Godfrey Rolles Driver, Canaanite Myths and Legends, 2nd ed. (London; New York: T & T Clark International, 2004). William G. Dever, “Ceramics, Ethnicity, and the Question of Israel’s Origins,” Biblical Archaeologist, vol. 58, no. 4 (2001): 207. This may explain the calf image in Israel’s renegade cult (Exod 32:4; 1 Ki 12:28).
[17] Also related to the council are qahal, mo’ed, and the Aramaic din. See Michael Heiser, Angels: What the Bible Really Says about God’s Heavenly Host (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2018), 13–17 for a concise summary of their usage.
[18] Heiser, Unseen Realm, 28–32.
[19] Heiser, Unseen Realm, 23, 45–46. He related this structure to that of the Ugaritic divine council.
[20] Heiser, Angels, 28.
[21] Heiser, Unseen Realm, 29; see also Heiser, Angels, 2–10, in which he places elohim in the category of “terms that describe nature.”
[22] Heiser, Unseen Realm, 32, emphasis in original. The “list” he refers to is on p. 30.
[23] Heiser, Unseen Realm, 30 n. 4.
[24] Heiser, Unseen Realm, 30. So also, in principle, Damick and De Young, The Lord of Spirits Podcast, “What’s a Spirit When It’s at Home?” broadcast October 13, 2022.
[25] Heiser, Unseen Realm, 32, emphasis added. There are other places where Heiser assumes the basic definition of “spiritual” to denote immaterial or even invisible beings.
[26] Geraldine Pinch, Egyptian Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Goddesses, and Traditions of Ancient Egypt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 201, 29.
[27] Hesiod, Theogony, 168–184.
[28] The idea of divine embodiment has been explored recently in Benjamin D. Sommer, The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009) and Tyson L. Putthoff, Gods and Humans in the Ancient Near East, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020). While ANE gods could be embodied in variegated locations simultaneously (e.g., their cult statues), there remained a single referent “body” of the deity in the mythic history of the religion (Sommer, Bodies of God, 22).
[29] E.g., Aquinas (ST I, q. 3–2) argued for the purely spiritual nature of God and the metaphorical sense of corporeal language associated with him, as well as for the incorporeality of angels (ST I, q.50). Xenophanes, quoted in Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 5.14, argued that God must be one incorporeal being, unlike the Greek mythic deities. Aristotle likewise posited an eternal mover that must be immaterial (Met. 12.6.4) and from this concluded that the first eternal mover is “eternal and immovable and separate from sensible things; (Met. 12.7.1, 12–13). This is different from the gods of Greek myth, in which the portrayal of deities is every bit as corporeal as their ANE counterparts.
[30] Similarly, Damick says that elohim means “ruler.” Andrew Stephen Damick, The Lord of Spirits, (Chesterton, IN: Ancient Faith, 2023), 15–19.
[31] This parallels the ohel mo’ed (tent of meeting, or tabernacle) and its later counterparts as renewed Edenic sanctuaries.
[32] Heiser, Unseen Realm, 32.
[33] Heiser, Unseen Realm, 239.
[34] James B. Jordan, “Merit Versus Maturity: What Did Jesus Do for Us?,” in The Federal Vision (Monroe, LA: Athanasius Press, 2004), 155–205; William N. Wilder, “Illumination and Investiture: The Royal Significance of the Tree of Wisdom in Genesis 3,” WTJ 68.1 (2006): 51–69.
[35] Heiser, Unseen Realm, 316–319.
[36] Heiser, Unseen Realm, 41, 59, emphasis in original.
[37] In a bizarre excursus he later suggests that freedom of will for imagers entails that God’s foreknowledge is of possible outcomes. Sometimes God foreknows events that do not happen! Heiser, Unseen Realm, 63–65.
[38] Heiser, Unseen Realm: Expanded, 51.
[39] I explore the reasons for this in Christopher D. Kou, “God’s Statue in the Cosmic Temple: צֶ֫לֶם and דְּמוּת in Genesis and the First Person Plural Cohortative of Gen 1:26 in Light of Sanctuary Setting and Christological Telos,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 66.1 (2023): 11–31.
[40] This makes “image” into a verb, something humanity does rather than something he essentially is, which is foreign to the biblical grammar of image.
[41] Heiser, Unseen Realm, 96, n. 9, emphasis in original.
[42] Peter J. Leithart, Revelation, International Theological Commentary (New York: T&T Clark, 2018), 1.229–232.
[43] I agree with him that Armageddon of Revelation 16:16 is har mo‘ed, the mount of assembly; Heiser, Unseen Realm, ch. 41. For further support, see Meredith G. Kline, God, Heaven and Har Magedon: A Covenantal Tale of Cosmos and Telos (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2006), esp. Appendix B.
[44] Plural qātîl form. See John Huehnergard, “Qātîl and Qətîl Nouns in Biblical Hebrew,” 1.3–45 in Sha‘arei Lashon: Studies in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Jewish Languages Presented to Moshe Bar-Asher (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 2007), 10, 16.
[45] Aramaic inscriptions do not appear until the ninth century BC and becomes the common tongue of the Neo-Assyrian Empire thereafter; Holger Gzella, A Cultural History of Aramaic (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 103–104.
[46] The Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon, s.v. npyl.
[47] DSS 4Q531 Frag. 5:2; 1QapGen ar Col. vi:19; 4Q530 Col. ii:6; 4Q530 Col. iii:8; 4Q531 Frag. 5:8. See also George W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch: A Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), 185.
[48] Because the genealogy of Genesis 5 begins with Adam as the likeness of God and fathering Seth as his own likeness, some argue that the line of Seth may rightly be called “the sons of God.” Because the term itself is not used, I think this is too obscure, and it doesn’t fit with the natural reading of ha-adam as the whole human race or with the fact that the only Sethite “daughters” are mentioned.
[49] Israel is later called “firstborn” and “sons of YHWH, God,” which suggests their elevated place in relation to the divine council (Ex 4:22; Deut 14:1).
[50] Jaap Doedens, The Sons of God in Genesis 6:1–4 (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 4–6.
[51] David Toshio Tsumura, “Kings and Cults in Ancient Ugarit,” in Priests and Officials in the Ancient Near East: Papers of the Second Colloquium on the Ancient Near East—The City and Its Life, Held at the Middle Eastern Culture Center in Japan (Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1999), 234–235. For an example of such a ritual see Daniel E. Fleming, The installation of Baal’s high priestess at Emar: a window into ancient Syrian religion (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992), 49–57. See also Herodotus, Hist. 1.181–182. Similar terminology is found in Egypt, with the hemet netjer priestess, which also means “wife of the god.” Mariam F. Ayad, God’s Wife, God’s Servant: The God’s Wife of Amun (c. 740-525 BC) (New York: Routledge, 2009).
[52] Heiser, Unseen Realm, 187–189.
[53] Marc Zvi Brettler, The Book of Judges (London: Routledge, 2002), 45–47. Brettler thinks Samson was literally fathered by the angel. Chisolm ably rebuts this while acknowledging the ambiguity of language; Robert B. Chisholm, Jr., “Identity Crisis: Assessing Samson’s Birth and Career,” Bibliotheca Sacra 166 (2009): 149–150.
[54] Michael S. Heiser, “Jesus’ Quotation of Psalm 82:6 in John 10:34: A Different View of John’s Theological Strategy” (Lecture, 2012 SBL Regional), p. 12, accessed Oct 6, 2022.
[55] Michael S. Heiser, “Deuteronomy 32:8 and the Sons of God,” Bibliotheca Sacra 158 (2001): 52.
[56] Daniel M. Gurtner, Introducing the Pseudepigrapha of Second Temple Judaism (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2020), 25.
[57] Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch, 15.
[58] Michael S. Heiser, Reversing Hermon: Enoch, The Watchers & The Forgotten Mission of Jesus Christ (Crane, MO: Defender, 2017), 4.
[59] Heiser, Reversing Hermon, 14.
[60] J. Daryl Charles, Literary Strategy in the Epistle of Jude (London: University of Scranton, 1993), 153, 161. Charles’s monograph remains the most thorough and levelheaded analysis of Jude’s rhetoric, including his use of pseudepigrapha. It also has helpful material on Petrine epistles.