“... 2:7. king as son of deity. In the ancient Near East kings were commonly understood as having a filial relationship to deity and were often considered to have been engendered by deity. Egyptian kingship was particularly strong on this point, since the kingship of the pharaoh was seen as derived from the divine realm. More particularly he was conceived as the son of Re, the sun god. In Ugaritic literature, Keret, king of Khubur, is identified as the son of El, the chief god of the Canaanites. Furthermore, iconographic evidence shows two princes suckling the breasts of the goddess Anat. Among the Aramean kings the designation was even included in their throne names (Ben-Hadad means son of Hadad). In Mesopotamia, from Gilgamesh in the mid-third millennium through kings such as Gudea, Hammurabi, Tukulti-Ninurta and Ashurbanipal, just to name a few, it was part of the royal prerogative to claim divine heritage. The Israelite kings, however, were sons of the deity on the basis of a covenant and not sons by nature (see Ps 89:26; 2 Sam 7:14). ...”