The first bit of conflicting testimony regarding monotheism that the Bible offers is the shadowy presence of rival deities.14 The Shema, the grand statement of monotheism, can be found near the beginning of the scroll of Deuteronomy (Dt 6:4). Near the end of the same scroll is a poem attributed to Moses that seems to suggest that, while the LORD may be One, the LORD is not the only one.

When the Most High apportioned the nations,
when he divided humankind,
he fixed the boundaries of the peoples
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according to the number of the gods;
the LORD’s own portion was his people,
Jacob his allotted share. (Dt 32:8–9)

This text can be translated and interpreted in ways that are congenial to monotheism, and it is poetry, after all, so we must allow it some rhetorical flexibility. Still, it suggests that Yhwh is the God of Jacob (an alternative name for Israel in the Bible), but that other peoples have their own gods. We cannot read the minds of the ancient Israelites; we can only read the literary legacy they left to us in the Bible.When the First Commandment, in Ex 20:3, says, “You shall have no other gods before me,” we cannot penetrate behind that word, “gods.” Did the early Israelites understand these gods to be unreal and without substance? Or did they understand them to be cosmic figures of some import but who were out-of-bounds for them?

We read in the book of Judges, for instance, that the Israelites had
“abandoned the LORD, the God of their ancestors, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt” and “followed other gods, from among the gods of the peoples who were all around them” ( Judg 2:11–12). The simplest reading of texts such as these (and there are many more) is that perhaps some Israelites held that while Yhwh was the God of Israel, Yhwh was not the only god. There may well be other deities for other peoples, but Yhwh is the sole God who deserves Israel’s awe and singular devotion.