The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible

by Michael S. Heiser

My friend handed me his Hebrew Bible, open to Psalm 82. He said simply, “Here, read that … look at it closely.” The first verse hit me like a bolt of lightning: God [elohim] stands in the divine assembly; he administers judgment in the midst of the gods [elohim].1 I’ve indicated the Hebrew wording that caught my eye and put my heart in my throat. The word elohim occurs twice in this short verse. Other than the covenant name, Yahweh, it’s the most common word in the Old Testament for God. And the first use of the word in this verse worked fine. But since I knew my Hebrew grammar, I saw immediately that the second instance needed to be translated as plural. There it was, plain as day: The God of the Old Testament was part of an assembly—a pantheon—of other gods.

The explanations I found from evangelical scholars were disturbingly weak, mostly maintaining that the gods (elohim) in the verse were just men—Jewish elders—or that the verse was about the Trinity. I knew neither of those could be correct. Psalm 82 states that the gods were being condemned as corrupt in their administration of the nations of the earth. The Bible nowhere teaches that God appointed a council of Jewish elders to rule over foreign nations, and God certainly wouldn’t be railing against the rest of the Trinity, Jesus and the Spirit, for being corrupt. Frankly, the answers just weren’t honest with the straightforward words in the text of Psalm 82.

Seeing the Bible through the eyes of an ancient reader requires shedding the filters of our traditions and presumptions. They processed life in supernatural terms. Today’s Christian processes it by a mixture of creedal statements and modern rationalism. I want to help you recover the supernatural worldview of the biblical writers—the people who produced the Bible.

I’VE ALWAYS BEEN INTERESTED IN ANYTHING OLD AND WEIRD. I WAS GOOD at school, too. When I became a Christian in high school I felt like I’d been born for Bible study. I know—that level of interest in the Bible wasn’t normal for a teenager. It was a bit of an obsession. I spent hours studying the Bible, as well as theology books. I took commentaries to study hall. Since there was no 12-step program for my addiction, I went to Bible college to feed it. After that it was off to seminary. I wanted to be a biblical studies professor, so the next step was graduate school, where I finally focused on the Hebrew Bible and lots of dead ancient languages. I’d found biblical nerdvana, at least until that Sunday morning when I saw Psalm 82 without English camouflage. Looking back, I can explain all my study, education, and learning before and after my Psalm 82 moment using two metaphors: a filter and a mosaic.

Psalm 82 has at its core the unseen realm and its interaction with the human world.

The proper context for interpreting the Bible is the context of the biblical writers—the context that produced the Bible.1 Every other context is alien to the biblical writers and, therefore, to the Bible. Yet there is a pervasive tendency in the believing Church to filter the Bible through creeds, confessions, and denominational preferences.

I’m not arguing that we should ignore our Christian forefathers. I’m simply saying that we should give their words and their thought the proper perspective and priority. Creeds serve a useful purpose. They distill important, albeit carefully selected, theological ideas. But they are not inspired. They are no substitute for the biblical text.

Modern Christianity suffers from two serious shortcomings when it comes to the supernatural world. First, many Christians claim to believe in the supernatural but think (and live) like skeptics. We find talk of the supernatural world uncomfortable. This is typical of denominations and evangelical congregations outside the charismatic movement—in other words, those from a background like the one I grew up in. There are two basic reasons why noncharismatics tend to close the door on the supernatural world. One is their suspicion that charismatic practices are detached from sound exegesis of Scripture. As a biblical scholar, it’s easy for me to agree with that suspicion—but over time it has widely degenerated into a closed-minded overreaction that is itself detached from the worldview of the biblical writers. The other reason is less self-congratulatory. The believing church is bending under the weight of its own rationalism, a modern worldview that would be foreign to the biblical writers. Traditional Christian teaching has for centuries kept the unseen world at arm’s length. We believe in the Godhead because there’s no point to Christianity without it. The rest of the unseen world is handled with a whisper or a chuckle.

The second serious shortcoming is evident within the charismatic movement: the elevation of experience over Scripture. While that movement is predisposed to embrace the idea of an animate spiritual world, its conception of that world is framed largely by experience and an idiosyncratic reading of the book of Acts.

My contention is that, if our theology really derives from the biblical text, we must reconsider our selective supernaturalism and recover a biblical theology of the unseen world. This is not to suggest that the best interpretation of a passage is always the most supernatural one. But the biblical writers and those to whom they wrote were predisposed to supernaturalism. To ignore that outlook or marginalize it will produce Bible interpretation that reflects our mind-set more than that of the biblical writers.

The odds are very high that you’ve never heard that Psalm 82 plays a pivotal role in biblical theology (including New Testament theology). I’ve been a Christian for over thirty years and I’ve never heard a sermon on it. There are many other passages whose content is curious or “doesn’t make sense” and so are abandoned or glossed over. Here’s a sampling of them: •Gen 1:26 •Gen 3:5, 22 •Gen 6:1–4 •Gen 10–11 •Gen 15:1 •Gen 48:15–16 •Exod 3:1–14 •Exod 23:20–23 •Num 13:32–33 •Deut 32:8–92 •Deut 32:17 •Judg 6 •1 Sam 3 •1 Sam 23:1–14 •1 Kgs 22:1–23 •2 Kgs 5:17–19 •Job 1–2 •Pss 82, 68, 89 •Isa 14:12–15 •Ezek 28:11–19 •Dan 7 •Matt 16:13–23 •John 1:1–14 •John 10:34–35 •Rom 8:18–24 •Rom 15:24, 28 •1 Cor 2:6–13 •1 Cor 5:4–5 •1 Cor 6:3 •1 Cor 10:18–22 •Gal 3:19 •Eph 6:10–12 •Heb 1–2 •1 Pet 3:18–22 •2 Pet 1:3–4 •2 Pet 2:4–5 •Jude 5–7 •Rev 2:26–28 •Rev 3:21 Don’t consider that a mere catalog. The list is deliberate, and all of those passages will be examined in this book.

My point is not to suggest that we can have absolute certainty in interpretation everywhere in the Bible. No one, including the present writer, is always right about what every passage means. I have a firm grasp of my own lack of omniscience. (So does my wife, for the record.) Rather, my contention in this book is that if it’s weird, it’s important. Every passage plays a coherent role in the mosaic whole.

CHILDREN OFTEN ASK, “WHAT WAS THERE BEFORE GOD MADE THE WORLD?” The answer most adults would give is that God was there. That’s true, but incomplete. God had company. And I’m not talking about the other members of the Trinity. GOD’S FAMILY The biblical answer is that the heavenly host was with God before creation. In fact, they witnessed it. What God says to Job in Job 38:4–7 is clear on that point: 4 “Where were you at my laying the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you possess understanding. 5 Who determined its measurement? Yes, you do know. Or who stretched the measuring line upon it? 6 On what were its bases sunk? Or who laid its cornerstone, 7 when the morning stars were singing together and all the sons of God shouted for joy? When God laid the foundations of the earth, the “sons of God” were there, shouting for joy. But who are the sons of God? Obviously, they aren’t humans. This is before the creation of the world. We might think of them as angels, but that wouldn’t be quite correct.

The unseen world has a hierarchy, something reflected in such terms as archangel versus angel. That hierarchy is sometimes difficult for us to discern in the Old Testament, since we aren’t accustomed to viewing the unseen world like a dynastic household (more on that following), as an Israelite would have processed certain terms used to describe the hierarchy.1 In the ancient Semitic world, sons of God (Hebrew: beney elohim) is a phrase used to identify divine beings with higher-level responsibilities or jurisdictions. The term angel (Hebrew: malʾak) describes an important but still lesser task: delivering messages.2 In Job 38, the sons of God are referred to as “morning stars.”

Right from the start, then, God has company—other divine beings, the sons of God. Most discussions of what’s around before creation omit the members of the heavenly host. That’s unfortunate, because God and the sons of God, the divine family, are the first pieces of the mosaic.

The psalm refers to Yahweh’s administration as a council.4 The first verse reads: God (elohim) stands in the divine assembly; he administers judgment in the midst of the gods (elohim).

Psalm 82:1 is especially interesting since elohim occurs twice in that single verse. In Psalm 82:1, the first elohim must be singular, since the Hebrew grammar has the word as the subject of a singular verbal form (“stands”). The second elohim must be plural, since the preposition in front of it (“in the midst of”) requires more than one. You can’t be “in the midst of” one. The preposition calls for a group—as does the earlier noun, assembly. The meaning of the verse is inescapable: The singular elohim of Israel presides over an assembly of elohim.

Psalm 89:5–7 (Hebrew: vv. 6–8) explicitly contradicts the notion of a divine council in which the elohim are humans. 5 And so the heavens will praise your wonderful deed, O Yahweh, even your faithfulness, in the assembly of the holy ones. 6 For who in the sky is equal to Yahweh? Who is like Yahweh among the sons of God, 7 a God feared greatly in the council of the holy ones, and awesome above all surrounding him? God’s divine council is an assembly in the heavens, not on earth. The language is unmistakable. This is precisely what we’d expect if we understand the elohim to be divine beings. It is utter nonsense if we think of them as humans. There is no reference in Scripture to a council of human beings serving Yahweh in the skies (Jews or otherwise).

What Psalms 82 and 89 describe is completely consistent with what we saw earlier in Job 38:7—a group of heavenly sons of God. It also accords perfectly with other references to the sons of God as plural elohim: The sons of God came to present themselves before Yahweh. (Job 1:6; 2:1) 1 Ascribe to Yahweh, O sons of God, ascribe to Yahweh glory and strength. 2 Ascribe to Yahweh the glory due his name (Psa 29:1–2).

The biblical writers refer to a half-dozen different entities with the word elohim. By any religious accounting, the attributes of those entities are not equal. •Yahweh, the God of Israel (thousands of times—e.g., Gen 2:4–5; Deut 4:35) •The members of Yahweh’s council (Psa 82:1, 6) •Gods and goddesses of other nations (Judg 11:24; 1 Kgs 11:33) •Demons (Hebrew: shedim—Deut 32:17)3 •The deceased Samuel (1 Sam 28:13) •Angels or the Angel of Yahweh4 (Gen 35:7)

“Who is like you among the gods [elim], Yahweh?” (Exod 15:11) “ ‘What god [el] is there in the heaven or on the earth who can do according to your works and according to your mighty deeds?’ ” (Deut 3:24) “O Yahweh, God of Israel, there is no god [elohim] like you in the heavens above or on the earth beneath” (1 Kgs 8:23). For you, O Yahweh, are most high over all the earth. You are highly exalted above all gods [elohim] (Psalm 97:9).

Biblical writers also assign unique qualities to Yahweh. Yahweh is all-powerful (Jer 32:17, 27; Pss 72:18; 115:3), the sovereign king over the other elohim (Psa 95:3; Dan 4:35; 1 Kgs 22:19), the creator of the other members of his host-council (Psa 148:1–5; Neh 9:6; cf. Job 38:7; Deut 4:19–20; 17:3; 29:25–26; 32:17; Jas 1:17)5 and the lone elohim who deserves worship from the other elohim (Psa 29:1). In fact, Nehemiah 9:6 explicitly declares that Yahweh is unique—there is only one Yahweh (“You alone are Yahweh”).

Those who want to avoid the clarity of Psalm 82 argue that the gods are only idols. As such, they aren’t real. This argument is flatly contradicted by Scripture. It’s also illogical and shows a misunderstanding of the rationale of idolatry. With respect to Scripture, one need look no further than Deuteronomy 32:17. They [the Israelites] sacrificed to demons [shedim], not God [eloah], to gods [elohim] whom they had not known. The verse explicitly calls the elohim that the Israelites perversely worshiped demons (shedim). This rarely used term (Deut 32:17; Psa 106:37) comes from the Akkadian shedu.6 In the ancient Near East, the term shedu was neutral; it could speak of a good or malevolent spirit being. These Akkadian figures were often cast as guardians or protective entities, though the term was also used to describe the life force of a person.7 In the context of Deuteronomy 32:17, shedim were elohim—spirit beings guarding foreign territory—who must not be worshiped.8 Israel was supposed to worship her own God (here, eloah; cf. Deut 29:25).9 One cannot deny the reality of the elohim/shedim in Deuteronomy 32:17 without denying the reality of demons.10 Scholars disagree over what kind of entity the shedim were. But whatever the correct understanding of shedim might be, they are not pieces of wood or stone.

Another misguided strategy is to argue that statements in the Old Testament that have God saying “there is none besides me” mean that no other elohim exist. This isn’t the case. These phrases do not contradict Psalm 82 or others that, for example, say Yahweh is above all elohim or is the “God of gods [elohim].” I’ve written a lot on this subject—it was a focus of my doctoral dissertation.12 These “denial statements,” as they are called by scholars, do not assert that there are no other elohim. In fact, some of them are found in chapters where the reality of other elohim is affirmed. We’ve already seen that Deuteronomy 32:17 refers to elohim that Paul believed existed. Deuteronomy 32:8–9 also refers to the sons of God. Deuteronomy 4:19–20 is a parallel to that passage, and yet Deuteronomy 4:35 says there is no god besides Yahweh. Is Scripture filled with contradictions? No. These “denial statements” do not deny that other elohim exist. Rather, they deny that any elohim compares to Yahweh. They are statements of incomparability. This point is easily illustrated by noticing where else the same denial language shows up in the Bible. Isaiah 47:8 and Zephaniah 2:15 have, respectively, Babylon and Nineveh saying “there is none besides me.” Are we to believe that the point of the phrase is to declare that no other cities exist except Babylon or Nineveh? That would be absurd. The point of the statement is that Babylon and Nineveh considered themselves incomparable, as though no oth...

Paul’s warning in 1 Corinthians 10:18–22, alluded to previously, reflects this thinking. Earlier in the letter, he told the Corinthians that an idol had no power and was, in and of itself, nothing (1 Cor 8:4).

WHAT ABOUT JESUS? Readers of Psalm 82 often raise a specific question about Jesus. If there are other divine sons of God, what do we make of the description of Jesus as the “only begotten” son of God (John 1:14, 18; 3:16, 18; 1 John 4:9)? How could Jesus be the only divine son when there were others? “Only begotten” is an unfortunately confusing translation, especially to modern ears. Not only does the translation “only begotten” seem to contradict the obvious statements in the Old Testament about other sons of God, it implies that there was a time when the Son did not exist—that he had a beginning. The Greek word translated by this phrase is monogenes. It doesn’t mean “only begotten” in some sort of “birthing” sense. The confusion extends from an old misunderstanding of the root of the Greek word. For years monogenes was thought to have derived from two Greek terms, monos (“only”) and gennao (“to beget, bear”). Greek scholars later discovered that the second part of the word monogenes does not come from the Greek verb gennao, but rather from the noun genos (“class, kind”). The term literally means “one of a kind” or “unique” without connotation of created origin. Consequently, since Jesus is indeed identified with Yahweh and is therefore, with Yahweh, unique among the elohim that serve God, the term monogenes does not contradict the Old Testament language. The validity of this understanding is borne out by the New Testament itself. In Hebrews 11:17, Isaac is called Abraha...

Important information about Jesus Christ being described as the Only Begotten Son of God in John 1. #Jesus #OnlyBegotten

The story of the Bible is about God’s will for, and rule of, the realms he has created, visible and invisible, through the imagers he has created, human and nonhuman. This divine agenda is played out in both realms, in deliberate tandem.

26 And God said, “Let us make humankind in our image and according to our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of heaven, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every moving thing that moves upon the earth.” 27 So God created humankind in his image, in the likeness of God he created him, male and female he created them. 28 And God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it, and rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of heaven, and over every animal that moves upon the earth.” Many Bible readers note the plural pronouns (us; our) with curiosity. They might suggest that the plurals refer to the Trinity, but technical research in Hebrew grammar and exegesis has shown that the Trinity is not a coherent explanation.1 The solution is much more straightforward, one that an ancient Israelite would have readily discerned. What we have is a single person (God) addressing a group—the members of his divine council.

IMAGE OR IMAGER? Identifying the nature of the divine image has preoccupied students and pastors for a long time. Chances are you’ve heard a sermon or two on the topic. I’m willing to bet that what you’ve heard is that the image of God is similar to something in this list: •Intelligence •Reasoning ability •Emotions •The ability to commune with God •Self-awareness (sentience) •Language/communication ability •The presence of a soul or spirit (or both) •The conscience •Free will All those things sound like possibilities, but they’re not. The image of God means none of those things.

The image is not an ability we have, but a status. We are God’s representatives on earth. To be human is to image God.

Understanding that we are God’s imagers on earth helps to parse the plurals in Genesis 1:26 and the change to singular language in the next verse. God alone created humankind to function as his administrators on earth. But he has also created the other elohim of the unseen realm. They are also like him. They carry out his will in that realm, acting as his representatives. They are his heavenly council in the unseen world. We are God’s council and administration in this realm. Consequently, the plurals inform us that both God’s families—the human and the nonhuman—share imaging status, though the realms are different. As in heaven, so on Earth.

The distinction helps us see that the original task of humanity was to make the entire Earth like Eden.

19 And he [Micaiah] said, “Therefore, hear the word of Yahweh. I saw Yahweh sitting on his throne with all the hosts of heaven standing beside him from his right hand and from his left hand. 20 And Yahweh said, ‘Who will entice Ahab so that he will go up and fall at Ramoth-Gilead?’ Then this one was saying one thing and the other one was saying another. 21 Then a spirit came out and stood before Yahweh and said, ‘I will entice him,’ and Yahweh said to him, ‘How?’ 22 He said, ‘I will go out and I will be a false spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.’ And he said, ‘You shall entice and succeed, go out and do so.’ 23 So then, see that Yahweh has placed a false spirit in the mouth of all of these your prophets, and Yahweh has spoken disaster concerning you” (1 Kgs 22:16–23). This passage, specifically verses 19–22, describes a meeting between God and his divine council. Verse 20 tells us plainly that God had decided it was time for Ahab to die. God then asked the host of heaven standing in attendance how Ahab’s death should be accomplished. God had decreed Ahab was going to die at Ramoth-Gilead, but the means of his death was not decreed. The council debated the matter until one of the spiritual beings came forward with a proposition (vv. 21–22): “I will go out and I will be a false spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.” Upon hearing this, God said (paraphrasing), “Good. I know that will work—go get it done.”

The takeaway is that God rules over the heavenly realm and the earthly realm with the genuine assistance of his imager-representatives. He decrees and they carry out his commands. These points are clear. What is perhaps less clear is that the way God’s will is carried out and accomplished is open—imagers can make free decisions to accomplish God’s will. God decrees the ends, but the means can (and apparently are at times) left up to the imagers. This balance of sovereignty and free will is essential for understanding what happened in Eden. The choices made by human and nonhuman beings described in Genesis 3 were neither coerced nor needed by Yahweh for sake of his greater plan. The risk of creating image bearers who might freely choose rebellion was something God foresaw but did not decree. We’ll examine all that in more detail in the next chapter.

The satan in Job 1–2 is not a villain. He’s doing the job assigned to him by God. The book of Job does not identify the satan in this scene as the serpent of Genesis 3, the figure known in the New Testament as the devil. The Old Testament never uses the word saṭan of the serpent figure from Genesis 3. In fact, the word saṭan is not a proper personal noun in the Old Testament.

Most of the twenty-seven occurrences of saṭan in the Hebrew Bible, however, do indeed have the definite article—including all the places English readers presume the devil is present (Job 1:6–9, 12; 2:1–4, 6–7; Zech 3:1–2). The satan described in these passages is not the devil. Rather, he’s an anonymous prosecutor, as it were, fulfilling a role in Yahweh’s council—bringing an accusatory report. The instances of saṭan in the Old Testament that lack the definite article also don’t refer to the devil or the serpent figure. Those occurrences describe either humans or the Angel of Yahweh, who is occasionally sent by God to “oppose” someone or execute judgment (e.g., Num 22:22–23).

God knows that none of his imagers, divine or human, can be completely trusted. The reason is straightforward. Though imagers are like God, they aren’t God. That’s a truth we know all too well from our own struggles and experiences in a fallen world. Without genuine free will, imagers cannot truly represent God. We saw earlier that the image of God is not an attribute or ability. Rather, it is a status conferred by God on all humans, that of representing God.

One of these attributes is freedom—free will that reveals itself in decision making. If humanity had not been created with genuine freedom, representation of God would have been impossible. Humans would not mirror their Maker. They could not accurately image him. God is no robot. We are reflections of a free Being, not a cosmic automaton.

being in the presence of God is no guarantee that free-will beings will never stray or act out of self-will.

We might wonder why God doesn’t do away with evil and suffering on earth. The answer sounds paradoxical: He can’t—because that would require elimination of all his imagers. But he will at the last day. For evil to be eliminated, Earth and humanity as we know it would have to end. God has a chronology, a plan, for this ultimate development. It could be no other way, given his decision to create time-bound humans as the vehicles for his rule. But in the meantime, we experience the positive wonders of life as well. Though God knew the risk of Eden, he deemed the existence of humankind preferable to our eternal absence. Despite the risk of evil, free will is a wonderful gift. God’s decision was a loving one. Understanding that requires only a consideration of the two alternatives: (1) not having life at all, and (2) being a mindless robot, capable only of obeying commands and responding to programming.

Since we aren’t told much in Genesis about how human freedom works in relation to divine attributes like foreknowledge, predestination, and omniscience, we need to look elsewhere in Scripture for some clarification. Let’s look at 1 Samuel 23:1–13.

This passage clearly establishes that divine foreknowledge does not necessitate divine predestination. God foreknew what Saul would do and what the people of Keilah would do given a set of circumstances. In other words, God foreknew a possibility—but this foreknowledge did not mandate that the possibility was actually predestined to happen. The events never happened, so by definition they could not have been predestined. And yet the omniscient God did indeed foresee them. Predestination and foreknowledge are separable.

That which never happens can be foreknown by God, but it is not predestined, since it never happened.

These ideas are unnecessary in light of 1 Samuel 23 and other passages that echo the same fundamental idea: foreknowledge does not necessitate predestination.

earth. God does not need evil as a means to accomplish anything.

Evil does not flow from a first domino that God himself toppled. Rather, evil is the perversion of God’s good gift of free will. It arises from the choices made by imperfect imagers, not from God’s prompting or predestination. God does not need evil, but he has the power to take the evil that flows from free-will decisions—human or otherwise—and use it to produce good and his glory through the obedience of his loyal imagers, who are his hands and feet on the ground now.

The picture, they say, is Adam as priest-king of Eden. Since Jesus was the second Adam and a priest-king, the analogy fits. The backdrop to the prince of Tyre’s arrogance is the rebellious Adam, not the serpent. This sounds reasonable until you start looking at how “Adam” is characterized in the verses that follow. 14 You were an anointed guardian cherub, and I placed you on God’s holy mountain; you walked in the midst of stones of fire. 15 You were blameless in your ways from the day when you were created, until wickedness was found in you. 16 In the abundance of your trading, they filled the midst of you with violence, and you sinned; and I cast you as a profane thing from the mountain of God, and I expelled you, the guardian cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire. 17 Your heart was proud because of your beauty; you ruined your wisdom because of your splendor. I threw you on the ground before kings; I have exposed you for viewing (Ezek 28:14–17).

After the fall, though humankind was estranged from God and no longer immortal, the plan of God was not extinguished. Genesis 3 tells us why we die, why we need redemption and salvation, and why we cannot save ourselves. It also tells us that God’s plan has only been delayed—not defeated—and that the human story will be both a tragic struggle and a miraculous, providential saga.

Interestingly, John mentions Cain specifically. Cain murdered Abel sometime after their parents were expelled from Eden, the point at which we’ve arrived in our exploration. Cain’s spiritual father was the nachash. They walked the same path.

Exposing the deficiencies of the Sethite view isn’t difficult. The position is deeply flawed.