Deuteronomy 32:8

Hebrew Bible

6 Is this how you repay the Lord, you foolish, unwise people? Is he not your father, your Creator? He has made you and established you. 7 Remember the ancient days; bear in mind the years of past generations. Ask your father and he will inform you, your elders, and they will tell you. 8 When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, when he divided up humankind, he set the boundaries of the peoples, according to the number of the heavenly assembly. 9 For the Lord’s allotment is his people, Jacob is his special possession. 10 The Lord found him in a desolate land, in an empty wasteland where animals howl. He continually guarded him and taught him; he continually protected him like the pupil of his eye.

Judges 11:24

Hebrew Bible

22 They took all the Amorite territory from the Arnon River on the south to the Jabbok River on the north, from the desert in the east to the Jordan in the west. 23 Since the Lord God of Israel has driven out the Amorites before his people Israel, do you think you can just take it from them? 24 You have the right to take what Chemosh your god gives you, but we will take the land of all whom the Lord our God has driven out before us. 25 Are you really better than Balak son of Zippor, king of Moab? Did he dare to quarrel with Israel? Did he dare to fight with them? 26 Israel has been living in Heshbon and its nearby towns, in Aroer and its nearby towns, and in all the cities along the Arnon for 300 years! Why did you not reclaim them during that time?

 Notes and References

"... If one excludes the case of Zoroaster, which is debatable and much debated, Second Isaiah is the first monotheist we know of. Traditionally, even those who insisted that Israelites must worship Yahweh alone accepted that the gods of other peoples were real gods, with real powers, and deserving of worship. The eighth-century prophet Micah summarised the situation with admirable concision: 'All the peoples may walk, each in the name of its god, but we will walk in the name of Yahweh our God for ever and ever.' The Book of Judges was written in the sixth century - and it still has an Israelite warrior say to the king of a neighbouring people: 'Will you not possess what Chemosh your god gives you to possess? And all that Yahweh our God has dispossessed before us, we will possess.' ..."

Cohn, Norman Cosmos, Chaos, and the World to Come: The Ancient Roots of Apocalyptic Faith (p. 152) Yale University Press, 2001

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