supremacy of the 'God of Gods'—Jehovah. But (so we may suppose the train of thought of the Jehovists to have run) the nations and their deities formed the vain dream of independence. The result of the struggle between Jehovah and the inferior Elohim is referred to in Job: the Elohim renounced their dream of independent sovereignty and were admitted into Jehovah's service. Henceforth they were no longer shīdīm, i.e. 'lords' (?), Deut. xxxii. 17, but mal'akīm 'messengers.' But the 'heathen' nations go on worshipping the Elohim, ignorant that their divinities have been dispossessed of their misused lordship.[1] Instead of Him who alone henceforth is 'enthroned in the heavens' (Ps. ii. 4), they honour 'that which is not God' (Deut. xxxii. 21), phantom-divinities whom they localise, like Jehovah, in the sky. Thus, except as to the region of the divine habitation, they differ radically from Jehovists like the author of Job. In that one point he agrees with them: the stars and the 'sons of Elohim' he still pictures to himself as closely conjoined (xxxviii. 6). Thus, the old and the new are fermenting in his brain, and on the ground of their angelology we can safely date the authors of Job somewhere in the great literary period which opens with the 'Captivity.'
- ↑ There is a singular reference to a still future deposition of the patron spirits of the nations in Isa. xxiv. 21 (post-Exile), with which comp. Ps. lviii., lxxxii. In lxxxii. 6 the title 'elōhim is interchanged with b'nē 'elyōn 'sons of the Most High.'
