The Lord had also executed judgments on their gods (Numbers 33:4).
This question was asked by one of our members. Here was the original phrasing:
It could be a question of translation, the perspective from which it was written, or just a play on words, but 33:4 really got me to thinking. "The Lord had defeated the gods of Egypt that night with great acts of judgment!" Moses states that God defeated the Egyptian gods. Did He really or did he simply defeat the Egyptians? Forgive me, but my question is going to get geeky below! :-)
I was surprised by the specific wording, because the phrasing seems to make it seem as if there really ARE other gods. I've been taught that there is only one God. But has been phrased in specific ways just to say there is only one God in Heaven? Does that mean there are indeed other gods that do not reside in heaven? Buddah, while not really a god is the centerpoint of a religion teaching enlightenment and becomming one with the universe, which I suppose could be viewed as a Buddist's form of heaven? Greeks had Olympus, Vikings had Val Halla, and there are countless other forms of this through all the varying cultures of the world. So, to paraphrase Obi-Wan Kenobi, only one God is correct, from a certain point of view (told you, geeky).
I would simply dismiss this as a weird translation issue, but in previous books and versus, even God himself mentions other gods by name and warns not to worship to them...Basically, did God actually defeat Ra, Nut, and Geb or did he simply defeat the mortal Egyptians because Ra, Nut, and Geb never existed?
Here was my response:
Although the Bible refers to "their gods" (e.g. in Numbers 33:4), this is not a tacit admission of the reality of other gods, as though they were deity like Yahweh, the God of Israel. What kinds of "gods" were these? They were "gods of wood and stone made by human hands, which cannot see or hear or eat or smell" (Deuteronomy 4:28; cf. Deuteronomy 28:36, 64). The Bible says that many so-called foreign gods were actually "demons" (cf. Deuteronomy 32:17; Revelation 9:20). In other texts such gods are mocked in contrast to the true God (cf. Deuteronomy 32:37-39; Judges 10:13-14; cf. isaiah 41:7,21-24; Isaiah 46:1-2,5-7). Unlike the true God, Yahweh, these "gods" were made by the people that worshipped them (cf. 2 Kings 17:29-31; 2 Kings 19:17-19; 1 Chronicles 16:26; 2 Chronicles 32:19; Psalm 96:5; Psalm 106:28; Isaiah 37:19; Jeremiah 1:16; 2:11). When Israel got divided into the Northern Kingdom (Israel) and the Southern Kingdom (Judah), the Southern Kingdom taunted the Northern Kingdom because they worshipped gods that are "not gods" (cf. 2 Chronicles 13:8-9). People who worship such false gods, which are but dead idols, are considered "ignorant" (cf. Isaiah 45:20-21). The fate of these man-made gods was destruction (cf. Jeremiah 10:11). The testimony of the nations will one day be: "Our ancestors possessed nothing but false gods, worthless idols that did them no good. Do people make their own gods? Yes, but they are not gods!” (Jeremiah 16:19-20).
Therefore, there are no gods other than the God of the Bible. Those that find their root in the Judeo-Christian heritage and the worship of the One true God but have deviated from biblical truth may worship the same God, but like Israel in her deviance, they have a distorted view of God, and certain ones have such a significantly distorted view (Muslims, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, etc.) that they have forfeited the way of salvation. As for Buddhists, Hindus and most other religions of the world, Jesus' words are instructive. He taught, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me" (John 14:6). As Luke writes in Acts 4:12, "Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name [only Jesus] given under heaven by which we must be saved."
So the reference in Numbers 33:4 to the LORD also judging the "gods" is probably a reference to what the Egyptians worshipped as gods, which were simply idols and natural phenomena (e.g. the sun god Ra), behind which may have even been demonic powers.