1. ELOHIM:
This Hebrew word
is usually traced to a root which means strength or strong one.2 Elohim is the plural form of the word which is
almost always used as God’s name along with singular verbs and adjectives,
although the singular forms, El, and Eloah also
appear. The question naturally arises, Why did the Old Testament writers use a
plural name for the one true God?
Several explanations have been offered of this usage of a
pl. term to denote a sing. idea - that it expresses the fulness and manifoldness
of the Divine nature, or that it is a plural of majesty used in the manner of
royal persons, or even that it is an early intimation of the Trinity; other
cognate expressions are found in Gen. 1:26; 3:22; 1 Kings 22:19 cf; Isa. 6:8. These theories are, perhaps, too
ingenious to have occurred to the early Heb mind, and a more likely explanation
is, that they are survivals in language of a polytheistic stage of thought.3
2 James
Strong, The Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible (New York: Abingdon
Press, 1890), Hebrew and Chaldee Dictionary, p. 12.
3 T. Rees, The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (Chicago:
The Howard Severance Co., 1915), II, p. 1254.
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