the strongest language the OT provides—that YHWH is God alone, ‘there is none beside me’. This declaration is stronger, one might conclude, than henotheism (‘you shall have no other gods’) or Ezekiel’s ironic intimations that if ‘gods’ (’elohim) exist, they are ‘dung balls’ (g’llulim). God is alone, there is no other, and he can swear only by himself, and so only by his own name, declaring that every knee will confess his Lordship and in so doing be saved (Isa. 45:22–5). When Philippians, then, speaks
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