Tool Beta
The Gods of the Bible
Every named divine being in Scripture, what the text calls it, and what the ancient world thought it was.
The holy ones
A name for the beings who make up God's court.
Deuteronomy 33:2-3, in every translation this tool compares.
Holy does not mean well behaved here. It means set apart for a god. The holy ones are the beings who make up God's court, and Psalm 89 sets the phrase in parallel with another one for divine beings, which is how you can tell it is not talking about Israel.
Qedoshim. In Psalm 89 they are the assembly around Yahweh, in parallel with the bene elim, and in these passages the word designates the council and not Israel. DDD files the singular title and the plural council together under "Holy One" and roots both in QDS, "reserved for a god, sacred." Applied to Yahweh alone and without the article, qadosh becomes the divine epithet "the Holy One" (Isaiah 40:25; 57:15; Habakkuk 3:3; Job 6:10); in the plural without the article it becomes a name for the council, as in Hosea 12:1, Proverbs 9:10, and Proverbs 30:3, where qedoshim stands in parallel with El and Eloah. DDD reads the overlap as a byproduct of Yahweh's identification with El: the Holy One and his holy ones both come from the same Northwest Semitic root sense, applied at two points in the same kind of sentence.
H6918 (קָדוֹשׁ), 116 occ of the adjective
- Deuteronomy 33:2-3
- Job 5:1
- Job 15:15
- Psalm 89:5-7
- Zechariah 14:5
- Daniel 4:17
- Hosea 12:1[11:12]
- Proverbs 9:10
- Proverbs 30:3
- F. van Koppen & K. van der Toorn, DDD s.v. "Holy One," 415-417
- Heiser, *Unseen Realm*, ch. 4
