The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible

by Michael S. Heiser

My goal is simple. When you open your Bible, I want you to be able to see it like ancient Israelites or first-century Jews saw it, to perceive and consider it as they would have. I want their supernatural worldview in your head.

Our context is not their context.

Our traditions, however honorable, are not intrinsic to the Bible. They are systems we invent to organize the Bible. They are artificial. They are filters.

the intersection of our domain and the unseen world—which includes the triune God, but also a much more numerous cast—is at the heart of biblical theology.

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

All malach are bene elohim, but not all bene elohim are malach.

the sons of God are referred to as “morning stars.”

Origin of the name Lucifer, a Latin translation of the Hebrew in this passage in Job.

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.

This is what in Judaism is commonly called the Heavenly Court.

The idea of elohim ruling the nations under God’s authority is a biblical concept that is described in other passages we’ll explore later.

See Jacob wrestling with the angel. In Jewish midrash, we learn this was the angel, the bene elohim, of the nation of Esau.

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.

We are created to image God, to be his imagers. It is what we are by definition. 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.

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.

Mind blown. This is a new concept for me, but it makes perfect sense, and aligns with my Jewish learning.

the biblical version of the divine council at the divine abode includes a human presence.

The Hebrew (satan) means something like “adversary,” “prosecutor,” or “challenger.” It speaks of an official legal function within a ruling body—in this case, Yahweh’s council.

Such, SUCH, an important concept that shapes pretty much all of the difference in understanding between Jews and Christians about this figure.

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).

HaSatan. This is how this figure is referred to in Hebrew.

Though imagers are like God, they aren’t God.

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.

Humanity was to multiply, steward the creation, and govern on God’s behalf. The goal was to care for the earth and harness its gifts for the betterment of fellow human imagers, all the while enjoying the presence of God.

divine foreknowledge does not necessitate divine predestination.

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

Since foreknowledge doesn’t require predestination, foreknown events that happen may or may not have been predestined.

God is not evil. There is no biblical reason to argue that God predestined the fall, though he foreknew it. There is no biblical reason to assert that God predestined all the evil events throughout human history simply because he foreknew them.

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

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.

What we do matters.

Genesis telegraphed simple but profound ideas to Israelite readers: The world you experience was created by an all-powerful God; human beings are his created representatives; Eden was his abode; he was accompanied by a supernatural host; one member of that divine entourage was not pleased by God’s decisions to create humanity and give them dominion.

How could God be here (visibly and physically) and still be in heaven? Today, this apparent conundrum is what keeps many Jews from embracing Christianity—it feels like polytheism to them.

There are two Yahweh figures in Old Testament thinking—one invisible, the other visible and human in form. Judaism before the first century, the time of Jesus, knew this teaching.

We tend to think of the law as though every one of its 663 commands were an oppressive lynchpin in a relationship to Yahweh. We tend to view the law negatively, as though it were given to produce feelings of guilt or to frustrate Israelites with the impossibility of pleasing God. This is misguided. The laws of the Torah broadly deal with a person’s relationship to Yahweh (e.g., worship, access to sacred space),1 relationships with fellow Israelites or outsiders (e.g., sex, business, property), and the nation’s covenantal bond with her God. The law was not a means of meriting salvation. An Israelite would have known that believing was at the heart of right relationship with Yahweh, not mere mechanical observance of a list of do’s and don’ts. For sure some Israelites would have lapsed into this mistaken thinking, particularly after the shock of the exile, but that wasn’t what the law was about.2

legalism was not intrinsic to a biblical theology of the law. The heart of salvation in biblical theology—across both testaments—is believing loyalty to Yahweh.

Israel’s status as Yahweh’s own portion was not an end in itself, but the means by which Israel would draw all nations back to Yahweh (Deut 4:6–8; 28:9–10). This is the idea behind Israel being a “kingdom of priests” (Exod 19:6) and “a light to the nations” (Isa 42:6; 49:6; 51:4; 60:3).

Salvation in the Old Testament meant love for Yahweh alone. One had to believe that Yahweh was the God of all gods, trusting that this Most High God had chosen covenant relationship with Israel to the detriment of all other nations. The law was how one demonstrated that love—that loyalty. Salvation was not merited. Yahweh alone had initiated the relationship. Yahweh’s choice and covenant promise had to be believed. An Israelite’s believing loyalty was shown by faithfulness to the law.

The concept of otherness was at the core of Israelite identity. Otherness is the core of holiness. The Hebrew vocabulary for holiness means to be set apart or to be distinct. While the idea has a moral dimension related to conduct, it is not intrinsically about morality. It is about distinction. Israel’s identification with Yahweh by virtue of his covenant with Abraham and the terms of the covenant at Sinai meant that, as Leviticus 19:2 concisely summarizes, Israelites were to be set apart (“holy”) as Yahweh was set apart (“holy”).

Despite the flawed use of this gospel passage, Christians still balk at this interpretive option for Genesis 6:1–4. The ancient reader would have had no problem with it. But for moderns, it seems impossible that a divine being could assume human flesh and do what this passage describes. The objection is odd, since this interpretation is less dramatic than the incarnation of Yahweh as Jesus Christ. How is the virgin birth of God as a man more acceptable? What isn’t mind-blowing about Jesus having both a divine and human nature fused together? For that matter, what doesn’t offend the modern scientific mind about God going through a woman’s birth canal and enduring life as a human, having to learn how to talk, walk, eat with a spoon, be potty trained, and go through puberty?

And there is no Old Testament verse that has a dying and rising mashiach.

The pieces were kept separate to obscure the big picture.

Only someone who knew the outcome of the puzzle, who knew how all the elements of the messianic mosaic would come together, could make sense of the pieces.

Paul refers to these hostile beings in the unseen realm earlier in Ephesians. He wrote that God raised Jesus from the dead and “seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above every ruler [archē] and authority [exousia] and power [dynamis] and dominion [kyrios]” (Eph 1:20–21 ESV).25 It was only after Christ had risen that God’s plan was “made known to the rulers [archē] and authorities [exousia] in the heavenly places” (Eph 3:10 ESV). These cosmic forces are the “rulers [archē] and authorities [exousia]” disarmed and put to shame by the cross (Col 2:15). Had those “rulers” [archōntōn] known that the death of the messiah was necessary for God’s plan to succeed, they never would have crucified Jesus (1 Cor 2:8).

Recall the story of Lot's daughters, and the birth of Moab. Recall the story of Yehuda and Tamar, and the birth of Peretz. Recall the hiding of mashiach.

If we could see with spiritual eyes, we would see a world of darkness peppered with the lights of Yahweh’s presence, spreading out to meet each other, inexorably pressing and spreading out to take back the ground of the disinherited nations from the enemy.

Baptism, then, is not what produces salvation. It “saves” in that it reflects a heart decision: a pledge of loyalty to the risen Savior. In effect, baptism in New Testament theology is a loyalty oath, a public avowal of who is on the Lord’s side in the cosmic war between good and evil.

The Torah was clear that possession of the promised land was linked to obedience, particularly in regard to rejecting the worship of other gods and idolatry (e.g., Lev 26; Deut 4:25–27, 39–40; 11:18–24). The preaching of the prophets, the destruction of the temple, and expulsion from the land itself jolted the exiled Israelites to the realization that their exile was due to disobedience. Consequently, the Torah became the central focus of the surviving community. In exile, the teaching of the law in the new institution of the synagogue replaced temple ritual in the religious life of the community. Synagogues and the focus on the law were retained even after the return to the land and the building of a new temple. With Israel determined to never be driven from the land again, the law became the orientation point for Judaism. The focus on obedience to the law became a way for the Jewish community to express commitment to God’s election of Israel and remain in the land. With

respect to this mentality, one scholar notes: “To the exiles, the Pentateuch’s curses for disobedience to the covenant must have appeared to be a breathtakingly accurate prediction of the Babylonian invasion and subsequent exile (Lev 26:14–46; Deut 28:43–52, 64–67; 29:22–28; 31:14–29). Thus when the Persians overran the Babylonians and subsequently allowed expatriate Israelites to return to their native land the leaders of the return understandably resolved to adhere strictly to the law and so to avoid future punishment for disobedience. Their Achilles heel prior to the exile, they believed, was their seduction into idolatry by foreign influences. The road to a restored covenant relationship with God, they reasoned, was a renewed determination to fence themselves off from harmful foreign influences by strictly obeying the Law”