Elohim (Hebrew: אֱלֹהִים) is a grammatically plural noun for “gods” or “deity” in Biblical Hebrew. 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 a formation from eloah, the latter being an expanded form of the Northwest Semitic noun il (אֵל, ʾēl). The related nouns eloah (אלוה) and el (אֵל) are used as proper names or as generics, in which case they are interchangeable with elohim.
The notion of divinity underwent radical changes throughout the period of early Israelite identity. The ambiguity of the term elohim is the result of such changes, cast in terms of “vertical translatability,” i.e. the re-interpretation of the gods of the earliest recalled period as the national god of monolatrism as it emerged in the 7th to 6th century BCE in the Kingdom of Judah and during the Babylonian captivity, and further in terms of monotheism by the emergence of Rabbinical Judaism in the 2nd century CE.
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Author: Wikipedia
Keywords: Elohim, El, Eloah, Eloha, Elohai, God, Plural of majesty, Trinity, Name of God, God's name, Deity, bene elohim
Bible reference(s): 1 Kings 11:33, 1 Samuel 28:13, 2 Samuel 7:23, Exodus 12:12, Exodus 20:3, Exodus 21:6, Exodus 22:8-9, Exodus 3:4, Exodus 4:16, Genesis 1:26, Genesis 20:13, Genesis 35:7, Genesis 6:2, Hebrews 2:9, John 10:34-35, Psalms 58:11, Psalms 8:5, Psalms 82:1, Psalms 96:5
Source: This article uses material from the Wikipedia article “Elohim,” which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.
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