Elohim

29 Episodes

Elohim is the most common Hebrew word for God in the Hebrew Bible. It is grammatically plural, built on the rare singular Eloah rather than on El, and it can name the God of Israel, a group of gods, or divine beings in general; whether a given occurrence is singular or plural has to be read from the verbs, pronouns, and adjectives around it.

Why this topic matters

The New English Translation renders Elohim as judges in Exodus 21 and 22, and its footnote cites two Journal of Biblical Literature articles as support. Both articles, Cyrus Gordon’s from 1935 and Anne Draffkorn’s from 1957, conclude that the word means gods, not judges. The judges reading is old: Targum Onkelos, the Peshitta, Rashi, and the King James Version all take it, because a plural verb next to Elohim makes the plain reading a court that brings people before the gods. Genesis 20:13 has the same problem, where Abraham says Elohim caused him to wander with a plural verb, and 1 Samuel 28, where the necromancer of Endor sees Elohim rising with a plural participle and Saul asks what he looks like.

The grammar also undercuts two popular readings. The Shema calls Adonai Elohenu, your God, which uses the word with a possessive suffix to pick out the one god among many that belongs to Israel, not to deny that the others exist. And the plural form has nothing to do with the Trinity: Elohim behaves like a concretized abstract plural that takes singular or plural agreement as context requires. The word was also distinctive enough that biblical writers mocked other gods by bending its sound, calling them elilim and gilulim, the second probably derived from a word for dung.

Where to start

Start here for the best in-depth listening on Elohim: featured segments, featured episodes, and the episode with the most mentions.

Quotes from the Data

“Elohim just doesn't mean judges. It means God, gods, or divine in the adjectival sense.”

Dan McClellan Episode 155

“The word for God, Elohim, is grammatically plural. And so in order to determine whether this is intended to refer to a singular deity or plural deities, you're supposed to look at the verbs and the pronouns. And so you could make a case that it would be more accurate to translate this: And it came to pass when the gods caused me to wander.”

Dan McClellan Episode 58

“I addressed the idea that it goes from being kind of a generic class to, you would see, ha-Elohim, the God with the definite article on the front as a way to kind of identify a specific God that is understood to be the main God. And then the definite article drops off.”

Dan McClellan Episode 182

“A lot of people want to read the Trinity into Elohim. They're like, it's plurality and unity all in one. And it has nothing to do with the Trinity.”

Dan McClellan Episode 182

Top episodes

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All episodes

Every episode currently tagged with Elohim.