The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible

by Michael S. Heiser

Compare the last two verses of Abraham’s genealogical roots (Gen 11:31–32) with Acts 7:2–4, and you’ll discover that Yahweh first contacted Abraham before he got to Haran—and it was more than a conversation in his head.

Yahweh appeared to Abraham. Abraham’s first divine encounter in Mesopotamia involved a visible appearance of Yahweh. Genesis 12 is a follow-up. Abraham and Yahweh had talked before—face to face.

Since the Word is clearly equated with and identified as Yahweh in Genesis 12 and 15, when the New Testament has Jesus saying “that was me,” he is claiming to be the Word of the Old Testament, who was the visible Yahweh.

the “Word” was just one expression of a visible Yahweh in human form.

We’ve seen this “confusion” of God with an angel before. It is deliberate. The point is not that Yahweh, the God of Israel, is a mere angel. The reverse is the case. This angel is Yahweh.

When God told Moses that his name was in this angel, he was saying that he was in this angel—his very presence or essence.

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. That’s why ancient Jewish theology once embraced two Yahweh figures (the “two powers”).6 But once this teaching came to involve the risen Jesus of Nazareth, Judaism could no longer tolerate it.

The Bible tells us the plagues were aimed at Egypt’s gods (Exod 12:12; Num 33:4), the elohim who had been given their authority by Yahweh and who were supposed to govern Egypt on his behalf. The idea is not that each plague neatly corresponds to an Egyptian deity, only that the powerful acts of Yahweh went beyond the power of the gods of Egypt and their divine representative-son, Pharaoh.

From the fourth dynasty onward in Egypt, Pharaoh was considered the son of the high God Re. He was, to borrow the biblical expression, Re’s image on earth, the maintainer of the cosmic order established by Re and his pantheon at the creation.

Pharaoh was the son of Re. Israel was explicitly called the son of Yahweh in the confrontation with Pharaoh (Exod 4:23; cf. Hos 11:1). Yahweh and his son would defeat the high god of Egypt and his son. God against god, son against son, imager against imager. In that context, the plagues are spiritual warfare. Yahweh will undo the cosmic order, throwing the land into chaos.

An ancient Israelite would have no trouble deciphering the messaging in Psalm 74 and recognizing that it ties the exodus crossing to creation​—and then links both events to slaying a sea monster known as Leviathan.

Genesis 1 and 2 don’t provide the Bible’s only creation story. Psalm 74 describes creation as well—as Yahweh’s victory over the forces of primeval chaos. Yahweh brought the world into order, making it habitable for humanity, his people as it were. The creation act as described in Psalm 74 was theologically crucial for establishing Yahweh’s superiority over all other gods. Baal was not king of the gods, as the Ugaritic story proclaimed—Yahweh was.

image. Yahweh had divine sons; he would also have a human family. Genesis told us that God had a divine council of imagers who represented his authority in the unseen realm and participated in his rule. It also showed us that God planned a mirror-council on earth, this time composed of human imagers. These two family-administrations were together in his presence. Heaven had come to earth at Eden. Humanity was charged with extending the earthly presence and rule of God throughout the whole earth. God wanted to live and rule with all his children in his new creation. Genesis 3–11 makes it clear that humanity failed miserably. Free will in the hands of imperfect beings comes with that risk. But the incident at Babel, foolish and self-willed as it was, shows us that there’s an Edenic yearning in the human heart, a desire for utopia and a sense of divine presence. But God would not trade his own version of Eden for humanity’s. He punished the nations with disinheritance. He would create a new people as his own portion. That inheritance was begun in covenant with Abraham and passed on through his family.

Yahweh’s perception of Israel is clear: “Israel is my son, my firstborn” (Exod 4:22); “Out of Egypt I called my son” (Hos 11:1). As Abraham, Yahweh’s portion (Deut 32:9), had been the new Adam, so Israel, the collective progeny of Abraham, was also the new Adam. Adam was Yahweh’s son. Israel was Yahweh’s son.

Every believer is also Abraham’s offspring by faith (Gal 3:26–29). We are the current and eschatological sons of God. Our status began with Adam, was rescued in Abraham, and was fulfilled in Jesus, heir to David’s throne.

the number of nations disinherited by Yahweh at the judgment of Babel was seventy.1 The number is telling. Israel’s nearest religious competition, the worship of El, Baal, and Asherah at Ugarit and in Canaan, held that their divine council had seventy sons. When Yahweh disinherited the nations and allotted them to the sons of God, a theological gauntlet was thrown down: Yahweh alone commands the nations and their gods. Other gods serve him.

The corrupt sons of God who currently dominate the nations will be replaced by loyal members of God’s family.

The destiny of believers who will share Jesus’ throne and the rule of nations is the backdrop for Paul’s statement that Christians should stop letting the world’s courts resolve their disputes.

The divine sons of God are called the “morning stars” in Job 38:7 and “the stars of God” in Isaiah 14:13. The imagery of Joseph’s dream, where the sons of Jacob (Israel) are stars (Gen 37:9), is no accident.

The notion of Abraham’s offspring becoming “heir of the world” speaks to rulership of the nations by those offspring. The corrupt divine sons of God of Deuteronomy 32:8 would be displaced by new divine sons of God—glorified believers.8 Paul’s logic makes sense if believers are Yahweh’s children, especially given the merging of humanity with the divine presence back in Eden. Even now we are “sharers of the divine nature” (2 Pet 1:4), but one day we will be made like Jesus (1 John 3:1–3; 1 Cor 15:35–49) and rule with him over the nations. Believers, the spiritual offspring of Abraham, will ultimately reverse the disinheritance of the nations along with the curse of death that extended from Eden’s failure.

Eden was also a mountain (Ezek 28:13–14), the administrative “seat of the gods” (Ezek 28:2), situated in “the heart of the seas” (Ezek 28:2), a description that reiterated the well-watered imagery of the council headquarters.

The fact that Eden is referred to as both a garden and a mountain in Ezekiel 28:13–14 is significant. It provides a clear conceptual link between Eden and the holy mountain of God, Sinai.

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.

Covenants were basically agreements or enactments of a relationship.

The covenant between Yahweh and Israel enacted at Sinai follows the conventions of a type of covenant known from ancient Near Eastern sources. Scholars refer to it as a vassal treaty.13 This type of covenant was, in essence, an oath of loyalty by an inferior (the vassal, here Israel) to a superior (Yahweh, the initiator of the agreement). The basic stipulations of the covenant relationship were what we know as the Ten Commandments (Exod 20), though there are other laws in Exodus 20–23. As with the earlier, Abrahamic covenant (Gen 15:9–10), a sacrificial ritual was performed to ratify the covenant (Exod 24:3–8). After the ritual there was a sacrificial meal between the parties involved. This was the divine council scene in Exodus 24:9–11

since the tablets themselves occupy sacred space reserved only for Yahweh’s presence (inside the ark within the holy of holies), the term appears to signify that the tablets of the law were also a sort of proxy for the divine council members who witnessed the event.

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). It’s no wonder that the book of Revelation uses the same language of believers in Revelation 5:10, a divine council scene, in connection with ruling over all the earth. The entire nation inherited the status and duty of Abraham, that through him—and now them—all nations would be blessed (Gen 12:3).

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.

Doing the works of the law without having the heart aligned only to Yahweh was inadequate.

Personal failure, even of the worst kind, did not send the nation into exile. Choosing other gods did. The same is true in the New Testament. Believing the gospel means believing that Yahweh, the God of Israel, came to earth incarnated as a man, voluntarily died on the cross as a sacrifice for our sin, and rose again on the third day. That is the content of our faith this side of the cross. Our believing loyalty is demonstrated by our obedience to “the law of Christ” (1 Cor 9:21; Gal 6:2). We cannot worship another. Salvation means believing loyalty to Christ, who was and is the visible Yahweh. There is no salvation in any other name (Acts 4:12), and faith must remain intact (Rom 11:17–24; Heb 3:19; 10:22, 38–39). Personal failure is not the same as trading Jesus for another god—and God knows that.

Israel needed to understand that being Yahweh’s portion meant separation from the gods and the nations who stood ready to oppose them. The concept of realm distinction was fundamental to the supernatural worldview of ancient Israel.

Yahweh is an elohim, not a mortal man. Appearing as a human being was a condescension that enabled the lesser minds of mortals to comprehend his presence—and live to tell about it.

The concept of otherness was at the core of Israelite identity. Otherness is the core of holiness.

Yahweh’s complete otherness was reinforced in the minds of Israelites through worship and sacrifice. Yahweh was not only the source of Israel’s life—he was life.

The logic of such exclusions is simple, yet foreign to our modern clinical minds. Sexual intercourse, emission of sexual fluids, uterine discharges, and menstruation were not considered unclean out of prudishness. Rather, the concept was that the body had lost the fluids that contain, create, and sustain life.3 That which is not whole and is associated with loss of life cannot enter Yahweh’s presence until ritual restoration rectified that status. The same reasoning is behind the ritually unclean status of those with physical handicaps, infected with a disease, and who have touched a corpse, animal or human.4 Yahweh’s presence meant life and perfection, not death and defectiveness. These laws kept the community conscious of Yahweh’s otherness.

As the divine abode, the tabernacle was also analogous to Eden. Like Eden, the tabernacle was cosmic in conception, the place where heaven and earth met, a veritable microcosm of the Edenic creation where God first dwelt on earth.

the description of the tabernacle as a tent dwelling is significant. Elsewhere in the biblical world, deities and their councils were considered to live in tents—atop their cosmic mountains and in their lush gardens.

the tabernacle on earth was to be a copy of the heavenly tent in accord with the religious principle of “as in heaven, so on earth.” The heavenly tent prototype was the heavens themselves, as Isaiah 40:22 tells us

Yahweh sits above the circle of the earth, in his heavenly tent, on his throne above the waters which are above “the firmament,” and rests his feet on the earth, which is his footstool (Job 9:8; Psa 104:2).

the desert would not only be a place forbidding to life but, as ground outside the camp of Israel and Yahweh, the source of life, would have a clear association with chaos.

In the Day of Atonement ritual, the goat for Yahweh—the goat that was sacrificed—purges the impurities caused by the people of Israel and purifies the sanctuary. The goat for Azazel was sent away after the sins of the Israelites were symbolically placed on it. The point of the goat for Azazel was not that something was owed to the demonic realm, as though a ransom was being paid.21 The goat for Azazel banished the sins of the Israelites to the realm outside Israel. Why? Because the ground on which Yahweh had his dwelling was holy. Sin had to be “transported” to where evil belonged—the territory outside Israel, under the control of gods set over the pagan nations. The high priest was not sacrificing to Azazel. Rather, Azazel was getting what belonged to him: sin.

The judgment at Babel made the world a very different place. Before Yahweh’s disinheritance of the nations, he had been in covenant relationship with all the descendants of Noah. God had told Noah’s sons to be fruitful and multiply and overspread the earth (Gen 9:1). It’s no accident that these were also the words given to Adam and Eve (Gen 1:22, 28). The sons of Noah were to expand God’s human family and carry on the original goal of an Edenic world. Babel undermined all that. In response, Yahweh made the nations outsiders. If his will was too burdensome, then they could serve other gods. Yahweh would transfer the Edenic dream to someone else—a people who didn’t yet exist, but soon would. Yahweh came to Abraham in human form, just as he had with Adam and Eve (Gen 3:8). The contact was personal because the interest was personal. Yahweh’s kingdom rule would be built on covenant loyalty. He would remain faithful, and beginning with Abraham, all who wished to participate could do so, if they, like Abraham, believed the covenant promises and turned away from the other gods. The promises would pass from Abraham to Isaac and then to Jacob (Israel). Yahweh’s family would be preserved through Joseph, and delivered through Moses. The deliverance, of course, was a means to an end. Yahweh wanted what he had wanted from the beginning: a mingling of his heavenly and earthly families on the earth he had called into existence. To that end he brought Israel home to Sinai. One element of t...

Procreation is part of the embodied world and is necessary to maintain the physical population. In like manner, life in the perfected Edenic world also does not require maintaining the human species by having children—everyone has an immortal resurrection body

The truth is that Christians affirm the incarnation because they have to—it defines Christianity. Genesis 6:1–4 is set aside as peripheral.

There are two alternatives for explaining the presence of giants after the flood who descended from the giant Nephilim: (1) the flood of Genesis 6–8 was a regional, not global, catastrophe; (2) the same kind of behavior described in Genesis 6:1–4 happened again (or continued to happen) after the flood, producing other Nephilim, from whom the giant clans descended.

The biblical writers deliberately connect the giant clan enemies Israel would face in the conquest back to the ancient apostasies that had Babylon at their root: the sons of God and the Nephilim, and the disinheritance of the nations at the Tower of Babel.

This wouldn’t be just a battle for land. It was a battle between Yahweh and the other gods—gods who had raised up competing human bloodlines that were opposed to Yahweh’s plan and people.

the most immediate link back to the Babylonian polemic is Og’s bed (Hebrew: ʿeres).9 Its dimensions (9 × 4 cubits) are precisely those of the cultic bed in the ziggurat called Etemenanki—which is the ziggurat most archaeologists identify as the Tower of Babel referred to in the Bible.

those who put the finishing touches on the Old Testament during the exile in Babylon were connecting Marduk and Og in some way.

Bashan was considered the location of (to borrow a New Testament phrase) “the gates of hell.”