Sons of God (B'nai HaElohim, בני האלהים) is a phrase used in Levantine Bronze and Iron Age texts to describe the "divine council" of the major gods.^{[citation needed]}

In the pantheon of 2nd millennium Ugarit the El, the father-god and head of the pantheon, and the 70 "sons of El", make up a "Divine Council" which deliberates over major decisions. In the 1st millennium the El had been demoted and each of the "sons of El" was held to have been given a "nation" as his charge: Chemosh, for example, was the god of Moab. Yahweh, not originally included in the Ugaritic pantheon, was the God of Judah and of Israel. In the Book of Genesis, Yahweh is seen as the single deity, with "sons of elohim" as his assistants.

By the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC further hypotheses were developed to explain this passage in Genesis. One hypothesis was that the sons of God were the descendants of Seth, the pure line of Adam, and the "daughters of men" as the descendants of Cain.^{[citation needed]}

In the Hebrew Bible the phrase "sons of God" occurs: