The name Elohim in the Bible

The name Elohim in the Bible

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Elohim is one of three Divine Names by which the Creator is known as He creates. The creation account is probably the most difficult and most enigmatic passages in the Bible. It starts at the beginning and it doesn't really end.

There are three stages upon which the creation unfolds. The first stage stretches from Genesis 1:1 to 2:4. During this period God is known as Elohim. From Genesis 2:4 He is known as YHWH Elohim. The third stage starts around the Noah cycle and flows over into the Abraham cycle and beyond across the rest of the Bible. Abraham, after all, was the first to believe and became not only a new creation but also the first of a new continuum of new creations. During this stage God is known as Dabar YHWH, or Word Of God.

For more on this read our article on the Chaotic Set Theory.

In 1 Samuel 10:5 occurs גבעה האלהים; the Hill of Elohim, which merits our name's inclusion in our list of Biblical mountains.

Etymology of the name Elohim

'Elohim' is a plural word, which is peculiar because God is one (Deuteronomy 6:4). Still, the singular form of the word Elohim is Eloah (אלה), and that form is used frequently in the Bible as well. In between these sits the construct form, that is: the plural form without the final ם (mem), or אלהי, Elohai, and indicative of a rudimentary genitive: 'Elohim of' or 'God of' or 'gods of'.

The etymology of both these terms is generally deemed uncertain but most likely they come from a root אלה('lh), which probably had to do either with being strong or else with leading (perhaps not unlike the verb אולII, 'wl II):

Abarim Publications' online Biblical Hebrew Dictionary

There are three roots of the form אלה ('lh) in the Bible, and one demonstrative pronoun. Of one of the three roots אלה ('lh) presumably come the Hebrew words for God.

It's meritorious to realize that where our word 'God' is a highly reserved word for the one true deity, and other 'gods' are indicated by the lower-case g, in Hebrew the words for 'God' and 'gods' are identical, are used for other ideas as well, and are part of a cluster of identical and similar words.

Moderns tend to assume that the ancients first began to develop their theologies in response to their fears of nature, but that's medieval nonsense. Up until the modern Renaissance, all science, technology and the arts were governed by one unified wisdom tradition. That means that until the Renaissance, a learned person would know everything about everything, and that is also why art from before the Renaissance so often expresses deep skill in what today are considered unrelated disciplines.

Before the Renaissance, the wisdom tradition was as universal as the laws of nature, and greedily swept across the world in utter disregard for political boundaries. That is why certain crafts such as agriculture and metallurgy — which are both not simply one activity but a whole spectrum — could arise pretty much simultaneously across wide regions. Folks like priests, druids and shamans were scientists, engineers, metallurgists, philosophers, doctors and artists combined. They were not merely the ancestors of modern preachers but of the whole spectrum of scientists, artists and entertainers.

The Sumerians were the first at pretty much everything and the Egyptians built buildings that we today could not produce. The armies of these regions may sometimes have been at odds with each other but their men of wisdom thrived within the exchange of knowledge and ideas. Moderns tend to believe that Israel was an isolated pocket of revelation within a desert of stupidity, but that too is medieval nonsense. A major theme of the Bible is the constant travelling of people across the entire known world, from Babylon to Egypt and Cush, from Arabia to Europe and perhaps even China (Genesis 12:1, 37:28, Numbers 12:1, 1 Kings 10:1-15, Isaiah 49:12, MATTHEW 2:1, ACTS 2:5-11), whereas staying in the same place is obviously associated to failure (Genesis 11:1-9).

Another folly of moderns is to think that the ancients were primitive, superstitious and all together not too clever. In stead, these people were precisely as intelligent as we are today, but their heads weren't filled with the vast library of distractions we treat ourselves to on a daily basis. Our knowledge and their knowledge do not relate like, say, a child's drawing versus the schematic of the space shuttle, but are of similar height and depth but with different focal points. They didn't have iron not because they didn't know how to work it, but simply because that's not what their society was going for. In other words: their men of wisdom had better things to do than figure out how to make steel, and where we today are great at making implements of destruction, they were great at things we know nearly nothing about. What's left of their legacy has for long been dubbed fables and mythology, but most recent times has seen an increasing urge of researchers to brave the truth: we are the stupid ones, not they.

These phenomenal ancient keepers of all of mankind's wisdom combined also gave us the source texts of the Bible. Hence the Bible does not merely speak of theological or even mythological matters, as many today believe, but the whole of wisdom across the entire scientific, technological and artistic spectrum (see our article on the names Zarephath and Menorah, or check out our riveting Introduction to Quantum Mechanics). And these same ancient scientists knew the universal Creator and Maintainer by a word that was identical to the words for 'these' and a verb that means to swear.

What these words have in common is an urgency to point something out, to highlight some phenomenon or focus the attention. To the ancients, God was not some old bearded guy in the sky but rather a single living Being from whom all reality derived; the description of whom would not lead to a mathematical Grand Unified Theory, but to a living and caring Word called Dabar in Hebrew and Logos in Greek

To the ancients, the Living God was not some invisible deity that you simply had to believe in (and whose invisibility was merely a ploy to test one's faith), but the obvious, unified mind behind the whole, clearly observable universe (ROMANS 1:20). Karl Marks was right when he noted that politicians like to anaesthetize the masses with debilitating religions, and that is precisely why the Romans persecuted the Jews and Christians. According to Cassius Dio, the charge upon which many were condemned was Atheism (read our article on the name Hebrew for more on this; also see our article on the Greek word πιστις, pistis, meaning "faith").

Also note the similarities between the following word group and the root-group אלל אול ('wl and 'll), and particularly the noun אלה ('allah and 'elah), meaning oak or terebinth, which appears to demonstrate that the ancients saw their reality as a forest of interlocked (evolutionary) trees, rather than the steady-state model of medieval exegetes. It also strongly suggests that Abraham wasn't just having a picnic when YHWH met him at the oaks of Mamre but was involved in the local wisdom school (Genesis 18:1). Likewise the Oak of Deborah (a name derived from Dabar, or Logos in Greek) was not simply an arboreal place of repose but a particular school of science and technology (Genesis 35:8). And likewise, Absalom's famous demise with his hair stuck in the branches of an oak, is not simply a snazzy Hollywood ending but demonstrates that Absalom was overwhelmed by superior theory, or rather: the natural rules upon which the world works (2 Samuel 18:9).

The demonstrative pronoun אלה ('eleh) means these, and obviously occurs all over the Bible (like in the opening phrases of the book of Exodus: Elleh shemot benay Israel; these are the names of the sons of Israel). This pronoun exists in similar form in other major Semitic languages.

On occasion this pronoun comes preceded by the definite article ה (he), which either emphasizes the demonstrativeness, or re-refers to certain articles: אלה means 'these' and האלה means 'the these' or 'those' (Joshua 4:20).

The root אלה ('lh I) is the assumed root of the words אל (El), אלה (Eloah) and אלהים (Elohim). That is, if these words come from the same root in the first place — but if they do then that root would like אלה('lh).

But whatever the etymology might be, in the Bible the words El and Elohim are most often associated with might or power. They are most often applied to God, but also to manufactured idols or tribal deities (Genesis 31:30, 35:4, Exodus 32:4, Daniel 5:23), powerful men (for אל ('el): Ezekiel 31:11, 32:21 Job 41:17, 2 Kings 24:15, Isaiah 9:6. And sometimes our word אל ('el) means power directly, such as in Proverbs 3:27, Micah 2:1, Deuteronomy 28:32, Nehemiah 5:5 and Genesis 31:29: יש־לאל ידי(ys-l'l ydy), meaning "it is according to the power of my hand". 1 Samuel 14:15 speaks of a 'mighty' (אלהים) earthquake, and in 1 Samuel 28:13, the witch of En-dor sees power (אלהים) arise from the earth. The prophet Jonah observed that Nineveh was a great and mighty (אלהים) city (Jonah 3:3).

The word אלהים ('elohim) is a plural word but in Hebrew plural is often deployed to express reverence or emphasis (comparable to English expressions such as "very, very good" or 'the band, Elwood, the band!'). It obviously describes a singular entity when it refers to the one and only Creator, but in contexts such as Exodus 32:1, where the people ask Aaron to make them אלהים, this word clearly refers to a singular item: a god or cluster of idols and their associated theology.

The word אלה ('eloah), also denoting God, appears to be a forced singular form derived from the curious plural word אלהים ('elohim) that's being used as a singular word anyway. The word אלה ('eloah) occurs mostly in the older parts of the Bible, and then again in the youngest parts, when the people under Ezra began to desire that old time religion, and associated phraseology.

Note that the form אל ('l) may also be:

• • אל ('al), which is the Hebrew transliteration of the Arabic article that survives in English in words like alcohol and algebra. There are some words in the Hebrew Bible that are transliterations of Arabic words, which contain this article.

  • אל ('al), particle of negation; not, no, neither.

  • אל ('el) preposition that expresses motion towards someone or something; unto, into, besides, in reference to.

  • אל ('el), which is a rare, truncated variant of the demonstrative pronoun אלה ('eloah) discussed above.

The root-verb אלה ('ala II) means to swear or curse, which makes some scholars embrace the view that God is He Who Swears, or even simply The Oath. This is not all that far fetched because the name Elisheba (which in Greek is Elizabeth) means just that: God Is Oath. Our verb is essentially a vehicle to express fidelity, and whether etymologically sound or not, it declares that God will always be true to His word (the Faithful One — see REVELATION 19:11).

Our verb אלה ('ala II) occurs only sporadically; the more common verb for to swear is שבע (shaba'). Our verb אלה ('ala II) means to swear in the sense of taking an oath before God (1 Kings 8:31, Hosea 10:4), or it may denote a curse (Judges 17:2), or a kind of adjuration or spell (1 Samuel 14:24).

This verb's derivatives are:

• • The feminine noun אלה ('ala), meaning an oath (Leviticus 5:1), a covenantal oath (Genesis 24:41), a curse (Numbers 5:23) or even an embodied curse (Numbers 5:27, Jeremiah 29:18).

  • The feminine noun תאלה (ta'ala), meaning curse (Lamentations 3:65 only).

The root-verb אלה ('ala III) means to wail, or so it is supposed. This verb occurs only once, in Jonah 1:8, in the form אלי ('ly). Very few scholars have opted that God might be a Wailer, but BDB Theological Dictionary indicates that this root may have more to do with the onomatopoeic interjection אללי ('allay), meaning alas! or woe! (Micah 7:1 and Job 10:15 only), than with the previous two roots אלה ('lh).

This curious root comes with one derivative, the evenly curious feminine noun אליה ('alya), denoting a Levantine delicacy consisting of a sheep's fat tail. This dish was specifically mentioned as element of various offering rituals (Exodus 29:22, Leviticus 3:9). None of the sources dares venture an explanation for this word, but perhaps it was the Hebrew equivalent of the German herrlich, which literally means Lord-like or divine, and which is commonly used to declare deliciousness.

Associated Biblical names

But perhaps אלהים comes from אלים, the plural of אל, (el), the common Canaanite word for god. Which leaves us to a discussion of the actual meaning of אל:

In HAW Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, Professor of Old Testament at Covenant Theological Seminary, R. Laird Harris Ph.D. states, "Most frequently mentioned suggestions for an original meaning are "power" or "fear" but these are widely challenged and much disputed. It may be noted that even if the origin of the word in Canaanite or proto-Semitic is from a root meaning power, this by no means indicates the connotation in Hebrew religious usage. Our word "deity" comes from a root in Sanskrit to mean "sky" but we do not worship a sky-god".

The Abarim Publications Editorial Team feels compelled to reluctantly oppose professor Harris' point of view and subsequent logic. If the word El originates in a root that means power, the explicit loss of this meaning must be proven (and if proof fails the meaning stands). That the Judaic tradition supports the idea that the most rudimentary experience of God has to do with power is demonstrated by Luke 1:49, "For the Mighty One has done great things for me," and Matthew 26:64, "...you shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right of Power..".

Another piece of (circumstantial) evidence comes through the name Abi-albon, which may mean Father Of Strength. This man is called Abi-albon in 2 Samuel 23:31 but Abiel (El Is Father) in 1 Chronicles 11:32.

The particle אל occurs often in names, and in our attempts to translate, we should also take the following words in account:

Abarim Publications' online Biblical Hebrew Dictionary

Associated Biblical names

It is impossible to combine all these words and seek for a fundamental meaning without beaching on the banks of triviality, but it must be noted that the general form of אל is much more common in Hebrew than our word "god" is in Germanic. It seems to be charged with a firmness and fixedness (oak, terebinth, these, oath) but also with the notion of separateness and disparateness (no/ not), as well as a rudimentary sense of the transfinite (unto, into).

In whichever way the Hebrews saw God, the names El and Elohim were far more rich in definite meaning than our abstract word "god". And whatever the etymology of either אל or אלה or אלהים, in the Bible these words are thoroughly intertwined.

Elohim meaning

Though certainly much debated, this Name (still most probably) has to do with the first God-experience that people had; awe or reverence for the powers of nature. In the Bible, this word is used for God Himself, but also so-called gods, the wooden or stone images people worshiped.

Elohim is even used to (probably) mean 'angels' and even 'judges'. For a list of occurrences where the word elohim does not mean God, see our article on the First Commandment.

Bottom line: the Name Elohim has something to do with powers: The Powers That Be; The Many Powered. To indicate the Living God this word can be accompanied by YHWH or any description like Elyon, or Shaddai.

Also note that the Hebrew name אל (El) transliterated into Greek forms Ηλ, which constitutes the first syllable of the word ηλιος, (helios), meaning sun and which originates in a very ancient proto Indo-European root.

See for a more elaborate discussion on the nature of God, our article on the Greek word θεος (theos).