Tool Beta
Hebrew and Greek Without Learning Either
A walk through Genesis, the Psalms, and John, plus the key Hebrew and Greek words worth knowing. Each card is a place the English Bibles part company, and what in the Hebrew or Greek made them.
elohim
God, gods, divine beings. A category word, and plural in form even when it means one.
Psalm 82:1, in every translation this tool compares.
Animal covers a whale and a mouse. It tells you what kind of thing something is, not how big or important. Rank has to come from somewhere else in the sentence.
Because it is the most argued noun in the Hebrew Bible, it is plural in form with a singular verb in Genesis 1, and the same word is used of Yahweh, of other beings, and of a dead prophet.
Versions read God when Yahweh is meant, gods or divine beings otherwise, and decide by context and capitalisation.
אֱלֹהִים elohim · H430
Elohim is plural in form. With singular verbs it means the God of Israel; with plural verbs it can mean other divine beings. The word marks the realm a being belongs to rather than its rank.
English has God and god and distinguishes them by a capital letter, a device Hebrew never had.
Capital letters in an English Old Testament are translators' decisions. Hebrew had no case distinction to make them with.
God is the majority rendering by an enormous margin; gods and divine beings appear where the context forces them.
- Heiser, “Should elohim with Plural Predication be Translated ‘Gods’?” Bible Translator 61:3 (2010): 123-136
- elohim of a dead prophet: 1 Samuel 28:13
- Singular verbs with elohim throughout Genesis 1
