Stephen DeYoung on Deuteronomy 32:8 and God’s Final Inheritance of All the Nations in Christ

A friend recently gave me a book by Eastern Orthodox theologian, podcaster, and author Stephen DeYoung. To my delight, there was a chapter entitled "The Powers of the Spiritual World" on the divine council, and it did not disappoint. In fact, it paired nicely with what I'd been hearing from some Protestants I've been listening to--namely, Michael Heiser and Doug van Dorn. Here's a snippet: 

As punishment [after Babel] and to prevent further such evil, God scattered and disinherited the nations. He then immediately, in the narrative of Genesis, began with Abraham to create a nation for Himself, through which He ultimately planned to reconcile all nations to Himself in Christ. In regard to those other nations, however, Deuteronomy 32:8 reflects on what took place. God reckoned to the nations of the world (numbered in Genesis [10] as seventy) their inheritance; to all the sons of Adam, He set their boundaries according to a certain number. Most English translations at this point reflect the medieval Hebrew text and say, “according to the number of the sons of Israel.” In addition to making little to no sense in context, nowhere do the Scriptures number the nations at twelve. The Greek text of Deuteronomy translates an earlier form of the Hebrew, stating that God divided them “according to the number of His angels.” Recently, among the Dead Sea Scrolls, the original Hebrew wording has been recovered, which indicates that they had been divided “according to the sons of God” (4QDeut).

Deuteronomy is here recording that when He distanced Himself from them, God assigned these nations to angelic beings in the divine council. These beings became corrupt, however, and were worshipped by the nations they were to govern. This is why all the gods of the nations are demons (see Deut 32:17; Ps. 96/95:5; 1 Cor. 10:20). This situation is also described in Daniel 10, as Daniel’s angelic visitor describes being delayed by a “Prince of Persia,” against whom he was aided by St. Michael the Archangel (v. 13), and that he is due for further battle alongside St. Michael against both this “Prince of Persia” and the “Prince of Greece” (vv. 20-21). Psalm 82/81, then, describes the judgment God pronounced against these beings, that they shall perish. The final verse of this psalm is sung in the Orthodox Church on Holy Saturday to celebrate the victory of Christ over the dark powers and the beginning of God’s inheritance of all the nations.

DeYoung, Stephen. The Religion of the Apostles: Orthodox Christianity in the First Century. Chesterton, IN: Ancient Faith Publishing, 2021, p. 70-1