Mind the Gap: How the Jewish Writings between the Old and New Testament Help Us Understand Jesus

by Matthias Henze

One of the oldest texts in the Old Testament is Deuteronomy 32, a song that Moses sings for the assembly of Israel. In it Moses recalls how, when the Israelites wandered through the wilderness during the exodus from Egypt, they committed idolatry and worshipped foreign gods. 16 They made [God] jealous with strange gods, with abhorrent things they provoked him. 17 They sacrificed to demons [Greek daimon], not God, to deities they had never known, to new ones recently arrived, whom your ancestors had not feared. (Deuteronomy 32:16–17; see also Psalm 106:37) In this passage, Moses is looking back at the exodus and recalling how the Israelites became unfaithful to their God and started to bring sacrifices to other gods. The word “demons” in verse 17 is referring to the gods of the nations—newcomers, as the psalmist derides them—whom the Israelites worshipped when they should have worshipped the God of Israel, whom their ancestors had revered for generations. These demons are also called “strange gods,” for their main threat is that they lead the Israelites astray to commit idolatry. They are the gods of the nations that surrounded Israel at the time of the exodus, not the malevolent demons of the New Testament that possess individuals and cause grave bodily harm to the possessed.