The first word for God in the Bible, why it is a plural noun, and what the Bible does and does not make of that
Elohim: The God Who Is Plural and One
The Bible’s first sentence names God with a word that is grammatically plural and takes a singular verb. The same word is used of pagan gods, of angels, of human judges, and once of Moses. Readers have found a great deal in that plural, some of it more than the grammar will bear, and the lesson is knowing which is which.
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Lesson 1 of 12 · The common word
Elohim is the Old Testament’s ordinary word for God — the word, not the name. It is plural in form and, when it means the God of Israel, singular in use: it takes a singular verb, a singular adjective, a singular "he." The same word means the gods of the nations, and can mean angels, judges, and anything treated as divine. Hebrew used plurals this way for things too large for the singular — the word for water is plural, so is the word for heaven — and most readers take the plural of Elohim as that: a fullness, a majesty, not a count. Christian readers have also heard the Trinity in it, and the lesson marks where that reading stands. What the word itself insists on is the singular verb: whatever the form, the God of Genesis 1 is one, and acts as one.
In the beginning, God
The word’s first appearance is the Bible’s first sentence, and the grammar is already doing something.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. — Genesis 1:1 · WEB
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God created: the noun is plural, Elohim, and the verb is singular, bara. A Hebrew reader hears no contradiction, because the language does this for a handful of great nouns, and this is the greatest. Thirty-five times in the first chapter the word appears, and every verb agrees in the singular.
אֱלֹהִים ʼĕlôhîym H430
plural of אֱלוֹהַּ; gods in the ordinary sense; but specifically used (in the plural thus, especially with the article) of the supreme God; occasionally applied by way of deference to magistrates; and sometimes as a superlative; angels, [idiom] exceeding, God (gods) (-dess, -ly), [idiom] (very) great, judges, [idiom] mighty.
The plural of eloah, god, from a root that probably means strength or power. In form a plural; in use, of Israel’s God, a singular, and the commonest word for him in the Old Testament, some two and a half thousand times. But the word is not his alone: it names the gods of Egypt and Canaan, the "gods" the judges of Israel are called, the "gods" of Psalm 82, and the spirit Saul’s medium raises. It is a common noun that became, by use, almost a name. The name itself is the next lesson.
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The same word for other things
Because it is a common noun, the word turns up where "God" in English would be wrong, and a reader who knows it is the same word reads the passages better.
“For I will go through the land of Egypt in that night, and will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and animal. I will execute judgments against all the gods of Egypt. I am Yahweh.” Exodus 12:12 · WEB
Against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: the word, in the plural sense, of the powers Yahweh defeats.
“Yahweh said to Moses, “Behold, I have made you as God to Pharaoh; and Aaron your brother shall be your prophet.” Exodus 7:1 · WEB
I have made you as God to Pharaoh: Moses is elohim to the king, the one who speaks with divine authority over him.
“I said, “You are gods, all of you are sons of the Most High.” Psalm 82:6 · WEB
I said, you are gods: the judges of Israel, addressed with the word and then told they will die like men.
“Hear, Israel: Yahweh is our God. Yahweh is one.” Deuteronomy 6:4 · WEB
Yahweh our God, Yahweh is one: the word beside the name, and the sentence Israel says twice a day.
The fourth is the one that governs the rest. Whatever else is called elohim, the confession of Israel is that its elohim is Yahweh, and that he is one.
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Let us make
Here the argument the plural has carried for two thousand years, and it should be stated with care.
God said, “Let’s make man in our image, after our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky, and over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” — Genesis 1:26 · WEB
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Let us make man in our image. Jewish readers have explained the plural as God addressing his heavenly court, or as the plural of deliberation that Hebrew and other languages use, or as the plural of majesty a king uses of himself. Christian readers from the second century onward have heard in it the Father speaking with the Son and the Spirit, and have read the plural noun Elohim the same way. Most Christian scholars today hold that the Hebrew writer did not intend the Trinity — the doctrine is drawn from the New Testament, not from grammar — while many also hold that the plural leaves room for what was later revealed, which is a different and more modest claim. This lesson does not settle it. It notes that the singular verb is on every side of the argument: whoever is speaking in the plural creates in the singular.
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What the word asks
It asks for the confession Deuteronomy puts beside it. A word that can mean any god is made to mean one God by the people who say which — and the Old Testament’s whole argument with the nations is about which Elohim is the Elohim. To use the word rightly is to answer that question, which is what the next eleven names are for.
Read Genesis 1:1 and Deuteronomy 6:4 together. Write one sentence saying what the second verse adds to the first, and whether "God" in English carries it.
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