Tool Beta
The Gods of the Bible
Every named divine being in Scripture, what the text calls it, and what the ancient world thought it was.
Resheph
A plague god reduced in the Bible to a word for disease, who still walks at God's feet in one poem.
Deuteronomy 32:24, in every translation this tool compares.
A plague god among Israel's neighbors, flattened in most English Bibles into a common noun: plague, flame, burning coal. In Habakkuk 3 he walks at God's feet, and a burning coal does not walk anywhere.
Usually translated plague, flame, or burning coal. In Habakkuk 3:5 he walks at Yahweh's feet beside Deber, which is hard to read as an abstract noun.
H7565 (רֶשֶׁף), 7 occ in 6 verses
Resheph is a well-attested plague and war god across the Levant and into Egypt. An Ugaritic pantheon list identifies him with Nergal, and the Keret poem casts him as a plague god striking the king's household (KTU 1.14 i:18-19). He appears in the Amarna letters too (EA 35). Mot had no offspring at all, according to DDD's "First-Born of Death" article, but Resheph was thought to have children, the premise behind Job 5:7's "sons of Resheph" flying up like sparks. In Habakkuk 3:5 he becomes a henchman in Yahweh's retinue, possibly one of two warrior gods, with Deber, flanking Yahweh, matching the Ugaritic Resheph and Deber as gods of war and destruction. Biblical usage keeps the name subordinate throughout. It is demythologized and attached to plague and disaster without acting as an independent agent, so death and disease stay under Yahweh's sole authority, the same demotion Deber and Qeteb get below.
- Deuteronomy 32:24
- Job 5:7
- Psalm 78:48
- Habakkuk 3:5
- Justin L. Kelley, "Resheph," *Lexham Bible Dictionary*
- Heiser, *Demons*, 33-34
- P. Xella, "Resheph," DDD, 701-703
