Elohim
Elohim is a Hebrew word meaning "gods" or "godhood". Although the word is plural in form, in the Hebrew Bible it most often takes singular verbal or pronominal agreement and refers to a single deity, particularly but not always the God of Judaism. In other verses it takes plural agreement and refers to gods in the plural.
Morphologically, the word is the plural form of the word אֱלוֹהַּ and related to El. It is cognate to the word ʾl-h-m which is found in Ugaritic, where it is used as the pantheon for Canaanite gods, the children of El, and conventionally vocalized as "Elohim". Most uses of the term Elohim in the later Hebrew text imply a view that is at least monolatrist at the time of writing, and such usage, as a proper title for Deity, is distinct from generic usage as elohim, "gods".
Rabbinic scholar Maimonides wrote that Elohim "Divinity" and elohim "gods" are commonly understood to be homonyms.
One modern theory suggests that the term elohim originated from changes in the early period of the Semitic languages and the development of Biblical Hebrew. In this view, the Proto-Semitic *ʾilāh- originated as a broken plural of *ʾil-, but was reanalyzed as singular "god" due to the shape of its unsuffixed stem and the possibility of interpreting suffixed forms like *ʾilāh-ū-ka as a polite way of saying "your god"; thus the morphologically plural form elohim would have also been considered a polite way of addressing the singular God of the Israelites.
Another theory, building on an idea by Gesenius, argues that even before Hebrew became a distinct language, the plural elohim had both a plural meaning of "gods" and an abstract meaning of "godhood" or "divinity", much as the plural of "father", avot, can mean either "fathers" or "fatherhood". Elohim then came to be used so frequently in reference to specific deities, both male and female, domestic and foreign, that it came to be concretized from meaning "divinity" to meaning "deity", though still occasionally used adjectivally as "divine".
Grammar and etymology
The word elohim or 'elohiym is a grammatically plural noun for "gods" or "deities" or various other words in Biblical Hebrew.In Hebrew, the ending -im normally indicates a masculine plural. However, when referring to the Jewish God, Elohim is usually understood to be grammatically singular. In Modern Hebrew, it is often referred to in the singular despite the -im ending that denotes plural masculine nouns in Hebrew.
It is generally thought that Elohim is derived from eloah, the latter being an expanded form of the Northwest Semitic noun 'il. The related nouns eloah and el are used as proper names or as generics, in which case they are interchangeable with elohim. The term contains an added heh as third radical to the biconsonantal root. Discussions of the etymology of elohim essentially concern this expansion. An exact cognate outside of Hebrew is found in Ugaritic ʾlhm, the family of El, the creator god and chief deity of the Canaanite pantheon, in Biblical Aramaic ʼĔlāhā and later Syriac Alaha, and in Arabic ʾilāh . "El" is usually derived from a root meaning "to be strong" and/or "to be in front".
Canaanite religion
The word el is a standard term for "god" in Aramaic, paleo-Hebrew, and other related Semitic languages including Ugaritic. The Canaanite pantheon of gods was known asUsage
Elohim occurs frequently throughout the Torah. In some cases, it behaves like a singular noun in Hebrew grammar and is then generally understood to denote the single God of Israel. In other cases, elohim acts as an ordinary plural of the word eloah and refers to the polytheistic notion of multiple gods.The word Elohim occurs more than 2500 times in the Hebrew Bible, with meanings ranging from "gods" in a general sense, to specific gods, to seraphim, and other supernatural beings, to the spirits of the dead brought up at the behest of King Saul in, and even to kings and prophets. The phrase bene elohim, translated "sons of the Gods", has an exact parallel in Ugaritic and Phoenician texts, referring to the council of the gods.
Elohim occupy the seventh rank of ten in the medieval rabbinic scholar Maimonides' Jewish angelic hierarchy. Maimonides wrote: "I must premise that every Hebrew knows that the term Elohim is a homonym, and denotes God, angels, judges, and the rulers of countries ..."
With plural verb
In the Hebrew Bible,, elohim is used with a plural verb. The witch of Endor tells Saul that she saw elohim ascending out of the earth when she summoned the spirit of the Prophet Samuel at Saul's request. The word elohim, in this context, can refer to spirits as well as deities. Some traditional Jewish sources say that the spirits of deceased human beings are being referred to. The Babylonian Talmud states: "olim indicates that there were two of them. One of them was Samuel, but the other, who was he? – Samuel went and brought Moses with him." Rashi gives this interpretation in his commentary on the verse. Regarding this, Sforno states that "every disembodied creature is known as elohim; this includes the soul of human beings known as 'Image of God'."In, Abraham, before the polytheistic Philistine king Abimelech, says that "Elohim caused me to wander". Whereas the Greek Septuagint has a singular verb form, most English versions usually translate this as "God caused". Regarding this, the Jerusalem Talmud states: "All Names written regarding our father Abraham are holy except one which is profane, it was when the gods made me err from my father's house. But some say this one also is holy, 'were it not for God, they already would have made me err'." The same disagreement appears in Tractate Soferim, where Haninah ben Ahi R. Joshua maintained that the word is "holy". An alternative view is that the word means "gods" and the verse means that Abraham's distaste for the idolatry of his father Terah led him to decide to wander far from home. Others, such as Chizkuni, interpret elohim as a reference to wicked rulers like Amraphel.
In, Jacob builds an altar at El-Bethel "because there elohim revealed himself to ". The verb niglu is plural, even though one would expect the singular. This is one of several instances where the Bible uses plural verbs with the name elohim. Some Jewish sources, seeking to explain the plural language of Genesis 35:7, translate elohim here as "angels", noting that in the story being referenced Jacob experiences a vision of malakhei elohim ascending and descending the ladder. Radak agrees that this is a reference to angels but also presents the alternative view that the plural form in the verse is a majestic plural, as seen in other verses such as and. Elohim can be seen used in reference to the angels in a variety of other cases, such as in and.
With singular verb
Elohim, when meaning the God of Israel, is mostly grammatically singular, and is commonly translated as "God", and capitalised. For example, in, it is written: "Then Elohim said, 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. In the traditional Jewish understanding of the verse, the plural refers to God taking council with His angels before creating Adam. It should also be noted that in the following verse of Genesis 1:27: "So God created man in his image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them"; the singular verb בָּרָא, meaning "He created" is used as it is elsewhere in all the acts of creation featured in Genesis. This shows us that the actual creation of man in Genesis was a singular act by God alone.Wilhelm Gesenius and other Hebrew grammarians traditionally described this as the pluralis excellentiae, which is similar to the pluralis majestatis.
Gesenius comments that the singular Hebrew term Elohim is to be distinguished from elohim used to refer to plural gods, and remarks that:
There are a number of notable exceptions to the rule that Elohim is treated as singular when referring to the God of Israel, including,, and, and notably the epithet of the "Living God", which is constructed with the plural adjective, Elohim ḥayyim but still takes singular verbs. The treatment of Elohim as both singular and plural is, according to Mark Sameth, consistent with a theory put forth by Guillaume Postel and that the God of Israel was understood by the ancient priests to be a singular, dual-gendered deity.
In the Septuagint and New Testament translations, Elohim has the singular ὁ θεός even in these cases, and modern translations follow suit in giving "God" in the singular. The Samaritan Torah has edited out some of these exceptions.
Angels and judges
In a few cases in the Greek Septuagint, Hebrew elohim with a plural verb, or with implied plural context, was rendered either angeloi or to kriterion tou Theou. These passages then entered first the Latin Vulgate, then the English King James Version as "angels" and "judges", respectively. From this came the result that James Strong, for example, listed "angels" and "judges" as possible meanings for elohim with a plural verb in his Strong's Concordance, and the same is true of many other 17th–20th century reference works. Both Gesenius' Hebrew Lexicon and the Brown–Driver–Briggs Lexicon list both "angels" and "judges" as possible alternative meanings of elohim with plural verbs and adjectives.Gesenius and Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg have questioned the reliability of the Septuagint translation in this matter. Gesenius lists the meaning without agreeing with it. Hengstenberg stated that the Hebrew Bible text never uses elohim to refer to "angels", but that the Septuagint translators refused the references to "gods" in the verses they amended to "angels".
The Greek New Testament quotes in Hebrews 2:6b-8a, where the Greek NT has ἀγγέλους in vs. 7, quoting , which also has ἀγγέλους in a version of the Greek Septuagint. In the KJV, elohim is translated as "angels" only in Psalm 8:5.
The KJV translates elohim as "judges" in ; ; twice in as "judge" in , and as "gods" in , , , , , , and .
Angels cited in the Hebrew Bible and external literature often contain the related noun ʾĒl in their theophoric names such as Michael and Gabriel.