The Book of Deuteronomy is the fifth and final book of the Torah (the Pentateuch), allegedly written by God and delivered to Moses on Mt. Sinai. As such, it is supposed to be sacred and prescribe great truth.

The “Song of Moses” (known in Hebrew as the Song of “Ha’azinu” – Hebrew for “listen”) constitutes the majority of one of the last chapters of the Book of Deuteronomy – chapter 32. It is an ancient poem that praises God and describes his help for the Israelites in the desert.

Deuteronomy 32:8-9 says the following (using the English translation of King James Version):

“When the most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel. For the LORD’S portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance.”

Now, let’s try to improve the old translation a little. The phrase “the most High” was a direct translation of the Hebrew word “Elyon”, used also in other places of the Bible simply as another ancient name of God. The phrase “the LORD” was an indirect translation of the Hebrew name “Yehova”, pronounced in English as “Jehova” and based on the ancient name “Yahweh”. Thus, the original Hebrew text actually says the following:

“When Elyon divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel. For Yahweh’s portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance.”

The original? Well, not really. When we examine the ancient Dead Sea Scrolls, we find the same poem, however with slight differences, most notably “the children of Israel” is… “the children of gods”. Add to this the archeological findings that talks about several different “gods” of that time (Yahweh being a son of the senior god). Add also some traces of this in the Bible itself, e.g., Psalms 89:6 – the K.J.V translation:

“For who in the heaven can be compared unto the LORD? who among the sons of the mighty can be likened unto the LORD?”

With similar translation fixes as above, bringing it closer to the Hebrew version:

“For who in the heaven can be compared unto Yahweh? who among the sons of gods can be likened unto Yahweh?”

And now we get the full picture, in which the text also makes much more sense: A nice ancient poem mentions the supreme god giving different territories to his sons, for different nations they support, plus a later sloppy edit which was meant to make the text more “monotheistic” and more local.