“Sing out, you nations, about his people!
For he will avenge the blood of his servants.
He will render vengeance to his adversaries
and make atonement for the land of his people.”
-Deuteronomy 32:43
Verse 43 of Deuteronomy Chapter 32 is actually quite controversial.
In order to explain why I need to give you a brief lesson on the history of Bible translations.
The first thing you need to know is that the vast majority of Bible translations use the Masoretic Text as their OT document source.
What is the Masoretic Text?
Here’s a quick definition I pulled from Wikipedia.
“The Masoretic Text (MT or 𝕸) is the authoritative Hebrew and Aramaic text of the 24 books of Tanakh for Rabbinic Judaism. It was primarily copied, edited and distributed by a group of Jews known as the Masoretes between the 7th and 10th centuries of the Common Era (CE).”
Now, although in the minority, some other Bible translations use what’s called the Septuagint as their source document.
The Septuagint was the first Greek translation of the Bible and was created about 200 years before Yeshua came onto the scene.
So to quickly recap, we’ve basically got the two following document sources for our translations of the Tanakh or the OT (the “Only” Testament is term I prefer).
1) The Masoretic Text…
…and…
2) The Septuagint.
The Complete Jewish Bible translation is based off of the Masoretic Text (as are most Bible translations).
Now why am I bringing all of this technical academic stuff up?
Because depending on which document source is used, the rendering of verse Deuteronomy 32:43 differs greatly.
Generally speaking, there isn’t much difference between the Masoretic Text and the Dead Sea Scrolls but when it comes to verse 43, there is a HUGE difference.
So how do we know which version is right?
Well, that’s where the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls comes into play here homies.
Because when one examines Deuteronomy 32:43 in the Dead Sea Scrolls we find the wording matches pretty precisely what’s in the Septuagint.
Here is the rendering per the Dead Sea Scrolls.
“O heavens, rejoice with Him,
Bow to Him all sons of the divine.
O nations, rejoice with His people,
And let all angels of the divine strengthen
themselves in Him.
Requite those who reject Him,
And He will cleanse His people’s land.”
So what’s plain as day is that there’s a heck of a lot more information in the Dead Sea Scrolls that were written about 10 centuries earlier compared to the Masoretic Text.
This obviously leads us to the following $64,000 question.
Why in the world have the verses that appear in the Dead Sea Scrolls (and the Septuagint) been erased from the Masoretic Text?
This is something I already touched on a couple of weeks ago.
Look at that part I’ve bolded and underlined above where it says..
….“Bow to Him all sons of the divine” or “Bow to Him all BENEI ELOHIM”.
The Masoretes removed these verses but why?
Because from a theological perspective, the phrase “sons of the divine” raises all kinds of thorny problems.
We’ll talk about this some more the next time we meet.
I’ve always seen “Sons of the divine”as those who were faithful angels and men who’ve accepted HIS word/SON. I also see Jesus as seeing it that way in John’s gospel we HE quotes Psalm 82. We also see “HaSatan” attending the assembly of “The Sons of GOD” in the book of Job.
My Bible is “Dead Sea scroll corrected so mine has that verse
It does not leave problems. You are trying to turn Judaism into a corrupt belief. Causing more anti-Semitism because of human worship. This is blasphemous to say that they removed it because it disagreed with them. Scripture says the firstborn son of HaShem is Israel, not yeshu. But hey if I can spread anti-Semitism than maybe a few unlearned human worshippers will listen to me.
The ESV Bible translates the verse as ‘gods’ as the Bene Elohim are always referred to as gods in the OT.“Rejoice with him, O heavens; bow down to him, all gods… The Septuagint is more accurate with ‘Angels of God: Rejoice, ye heavens, with him, and let all the angels of God worship him;…
Deuteronomy 32:43 in the Interlinear direct Hebrew translations says “:43 Rejoice, 7442 z8685 O ye nations, 1471 [with] his people: 5971 for x3588 he will avenge 5358 z8799 the blood 1818 of his servants,”