Nielsen’s Nook

There is an issue in the text here that seems to be glossed over in many translations. Deuteronomy 4:32-40 specifically (and larger parts of the OT generally) are making polemic against social and theological norms that are aberrant. This seems evident in the Hebrew. In Deuteronomy 4:32 most translations capitalize the word God, which seems right given that the god in view is the one who created (barah). Conceptually, this is God, the Lord, YHWH.

As most translations catch, the word for god (elohim) is rendered lowercase (i.e., god not God). But when the Hebrew text uses the definite article or the reflexive pronoun (hu’), the NIV and KJV do not bring out the polemic that appears to be going on here. The ESV and NRSV do the best job of catching this, but do not stay as consistent as the Hebrew would seem to warrant.

For example, in Deuteronomy 4:33-34 we read this abridged in the ESV:

Did any people ever hear the voice of a god speaking … and still live? … Or has any god ever attempted to go and take a nation for himself … which the Lord your God did for you in Egypt…

The KJV alone here in missing the argument in the Hebrew reads in abridged form:

Did ever people hear the voice of God speaking … and live? … Or hath God assayed [i.e., attempted] to go and take him a nation … according to all that the LORD your God did for you in Egypt …

The difficulty here is that you have an impossible question to answer if you follow the KJV’s translation. “Did God do ‘x’ according to what God did when he did ‘x’ ” is the logic of the translation. The problem here is that when the KJV has the only subject as the covenant God, and not gods and God, then we get a sort of tautological idea that really seems out of place.

When we come to Deuteronomy 4:39, it is the KJV over against the ESV, NIV, and NRSV that does a better job translating the Hebrew. These translations lack in that they don’t bring the weight of the argument to confront their English speaking readers. The Hebrew here is:

The maroon text above may be translated as:

… for YHWH himself is the God in heaven above and upon the earth below - there is no other.

The Hebrews were living among a polytheistic peoples and had demonstrated polytheistic tendencies in their history (e.g., the golden calf, Exodus 32). YHWH had broken into time and space and crushed Egypt before this tiny people in order to deliver them. However, it was in Israel’s deliverance that we find God revealing much about himself to his new people. In the means God employs to deliver his people we find he declares himself to be the only God anywhere, anytime.

In omitting the pronoun hu’, taken reflexively in my translation (i.e., himself), the ESV, NIV and NRSV all obfuscate the singularity of the claim that is being made. Even the KJV in catching the pronoun, leaves out the article that has been missing up to this point in the passage. It is possible to discern this in the English texts because they all include the “there is no other” clause at the end of the verse; however, the emphatic nature of the Hebrew seems diminished unnecessarily.

This has implications for how we understand the nature of salvation as applied today. Polytheism is alive and well in quite sophisticated ways in the twenty-first century. We worship money, power, possessions, and even Buddha, Allah, rivers and animals (e.g., in India). It is not merely a third-world country issue. It is rampant in all the world. It is not just “out there” in the world, but as Calvin noted, “our hearts are idol factories”. Thus, we take away from Deuteronomy 4:32-40 that if God will crush the Egyptian pantheon to deliver his people then and bring them near to himself at that time, then we may expect that he will invade the pantheons of our own hearts without hindrance and deliver us to union with himself in the same bonds of love.