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Sirach echoes Deuteronomy 32, describing how God gave each nation its own divine rule and was Israel's patron deity. Jubilees builds on this tradition, describing those rulers as divine spirits who lead the nations away from God.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Sirach 17:17
Ben Sira, Ecclesiasticus
Deuterocanon
14 He said to them, "Beware of all evil." And he gave commandment to each of them concerning the neighbor. 15 Their ways are always known to him; they will not be hid from his eyes. 17 He appointed a ruler for every nation, but Israel is the Lord's own portion. 19 All their works are as clear as the sun before him, and his eyes are ever upon their ways. 20 Their iniquities are not hidden from him, and all their sins are before the Lord.
Jubilees 15:31
Pseudepigrapha
30 For the Lord did not draw near to himself either Ishmael, his sons, his brothers, or Esau. He did not choose them simply because they were among Abraham’s children, for he knew them. But he chose Israel to be his people. 31 He sanctified them and gathered them from all mankind. For there are many nations and many peoples and all belong to him. He made spirits rule over all in order to lead them astray from following him. 32 But over Israel he made no angel or spirit rule because he alone is their ruler. He will guard them and require them for himself from his angels, his spirits, and everyone, and all his powers so that he may guard them and bless them and so that they may be his and he theirs from now and forever. 33 I am now telling you that the Israelites will prove false to this ordinance. They will not circumcise their sons in accord with this entire law because they will leave some of the flesh of their circumcision when they circumcise their sons. All the people of Belial will leave their sons uncircumcised just as they were born.
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Notes and References
... Already in the decades prior to the crisis precipitated by the reforms introduced by Antiochus Epiphanes, Jesus ben Sira includes in a passage mainly concerned with anthropology the observation that God ‘appointed a ruler for every nation, but Israel is the Lord's own portion’ (Sirach 17:17). This parallels exactly the original text of Deuteronomy 32.8-9. Interestingly, a couple of late Greek manuscripts, minuscules 70 and 248, make the reference at Sirach 17:17 more precise, adding at the beginning of this sentence the notice that ‘[f]or at the division of the nations of all the earth, he appointed a ruler...’ This should be probably regarded as a later gloss, but necessarily a particularly late one ...
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