An excerpt from the article The Elohim: What (or Who) Are They? by Michael S. Heiser.
The biblical use of elohim is not hard to understand once we know that it isn’t about attributes. What all the figures on the list have in common is that they are inhabitants of the spiritual world. In that realm there is hierarchy.
For example, Yahweh possesses superior attributes with respect to all elohim. But God’s attributes aren’t what makes him an elohim, since inferior beings are members of that same group. The Old Testament writers understood that Yahweh was an elohim—but no other elohim was Yahweh. He was species-unique among all residents of the spiritual world.
This is not to say that an elohim could not interact with the human world. The Bible makes it clear that divine beings can (and did) assume physical human form, and even corporeal flesh, for interaction with people, but that is not their normal estate. Spiritual beings are “spirits” (1 Kgs. 22:19–22; John 4:24; Heb. 1:14; Rev. 1:4). In like manner, humans can be transported to the divine realm (e.g., Isa. 6), but that is not our normal plane of existence. As I explained earlier, the word elohim is a “place of residence” term. It has nothing to do with a specific set of attributes.
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A few weeks before I saw 4 beings just before the creation in Genesis 1. (And still see them.) I think these 4 entities are the Elohim: Our God, the god of the Islam, the god of Buddhism and the god of Hinduism. And all of them have a great influence upon us, human beings.
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That's probably the best way to deal with it in the English language. The Japanese is just useful in case you need to explain the Hebrew word elohim to someone
Thanks Doug. This is also very interesting, and makes me all the more grateful for Scholars, and the work they do to bring clarity to language differences.
Thanks Z. This is very interesting. The (tentative) position I took on this subject earlier before this post was that I like the God/god juxtaposition, because its easy for me to understand. Elsewhere in Scripture it says that "God is spirit…", so that part is clarified.
I actually like to compare the word elohim to the Japanese word Kami. It is closer in meaning to the word elohim than the english word god is. A Kami is a word for spiritual entity that includes God and which is translated as Kami or Kami Sama, to mid tier gods and all the way down to a spirit created by human interference like an Inugami or Tsukumogami.
Elohim is not God’s name, nor is it a title.
“Elohim” is a word that means something like “entity(s) that lives on the other side” or “entity(s) that lives in the spirit realm.”
The word is plural in shape, but like the English word “deer”, grammar determines if the word is actually plural or singular. “I just shot a deer.” Or “Look at all of those deer.”
Similarly, Hebrew grammar determines if “elohim” is singular or plural. When it’s singular, it refers to the God of Israel, something like, “The single entity in the spirit realm who is sovereignly unique.” Obviously that’s Yahweh.
When plural, it means something else. The definition is determined by context… In the Hebrew bible, this word is used to also mean “gods”, or “divine assembly”, or “disembodied human” or “demonic spirit.”
This was an imposed veil which put up an artificial barrier between man and YWHW.
Jesus ripped that curtain down when he said; "Abba Father".
Paul made sure it stayed down when he repeated that same phrase, twice.
"Abba" = Daddy
The entry in the Encyclopedia Britannica for "Yahweh" helpful:
"Yahweh, the god of the Israelites, whose name was revealed to Moses as four Hebrew consonants (YHWH) called the tetragrammaton.
After the Babylonian Exile (6th century bce), and especially from the 3rd century bce on, Jews ceased to use the name Yahweh for two reasons. As Judaism became a universal rather than merely local religion, the more common noun Elohim, meaning “God,” tended to replace Yahweh to demonstrate the universal sovereignty of Israel’s God over all others. At the same time, the divine name was increasingly regarded as too sacred to be uttered; it was thus replaced vocally in the synagogue ritual by the Hebrew word Adonai (“My Lord”), which was translated as Kyrios (“Lord”) in the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Hebrew Scriptures.
The Masoretes, who from about the 6th to the 10th century worked to reproduce the original text of the Hebrew Bible, replaced the vowels of the name YHWH with the vowel signs of the Hebrew words Adonai or Elohim. Latin-speaking Christian scholars substituted the Y (which does not exist in Latin) with an I or a J (the latter of which exists in Latin as a variant form of I). Thus, the tetragrammaton became the artificial Latinized name Jehovah (JeHoWaH). As the use of the name spread throughout medieval Europe, the initial letter J was pronounced according to the local vernacular language rather than Latin."
"You also probably recognize elohim as one of God’s names, despite the fact that the form of the word is plural"
Is "elohim" a name, or a title?
God said out of the burning bush to Moses that He was to be called "I Am".
Is that His Name?