Deuteronomy 4:19 warns Israel not to worship the host of heaven, 'which YHWH your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven', and Deuteronomy 32:8-9 (DSS reading) pairs the allotment with the sons of God. The cult was real and documented inside the text: 2 Kings 21:3-5 has Manasseh build altars to the host in the Temple itself, and Zephaniah 1:5 condemns rooftop star worship. Job 38:7 has the morning stars singing together, the host as a chorus with a command structure.
Readers have long noted the allotment sounds like permission, for other nations. Second Temple literature, 1 Enoch's Astronomical Book included, treats the stars as angelic officers, and later Jewish and Christian astrology repeatedly claimed the host as a lawful science for everyone but Israel, or for Israel too, depending on the century.
The host completes the council's org chart: gods beneath, stars above as their visible ranks. Ancient readers looking up saw a chain of command, not a ceiling, which is why astral worship was prosecuted as sedition: to sacrifice to the host was to swear allegiance to another nation's assigned officers.
If the stars were allotted to the nations, what was Israel allotted?