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Back to Question of the Week Q: I have a question about Psalms 82 which starts out: "God standeth in the congregation of the mighty; he judgeth among the gods." I was wondering about the use of the word "gods" and how it is translated out from the Hebrew. I have heard that it translates out as "judges". Also if God was holding counsel over these super worldly judges could they be considered "gods"? The context of this verse would suggest that at one point in time these "gods" were condemned to a mortal death for not favoring the correct peoples (Verse 3: Defend the poor and fatherless: do justice to the afflicted and needy.) I would infer that at one point in time there were other "gods", and may still be, commanded by God the Creator. Also could you shed some light on the word "elohim" used in the first chapter of Genesis. Shane |
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A: Shane, once again you've asked an insightful and complex question- I'll just touch on this topic, it's actually the kind of question overcaffeinated graduate students write whole dissertations on. Briefly, the word Elohim can mean a lot of different things, and is interpreted in various ways according to the context and the worldview of the commentator. Most of the time in the Hebrew Bible, Elohim simply means "God," in the sense of the God of Creation, Who is also the God of Israel and the God Who spoke with the prophets. The word Elohim actually derives from the word El, which also means "God," in a generic sense, and can even refer to other gods who are worshipped in Biblical times. Elohim is technically a plural noun, but mostly means "God", as in "The Only One." Now, you're absolutely correct, sometimes Elohim seems to mean something other than "God" in the regular sense of the word. For example, sometimes Elohim seems to refer to other deities, as in Exodus 20:3 (the commandment not to have any other gods), or Exodus 18:11, where Yitro, Moshe's father in law, declares that the God of Israel is greater than the other elohim. Yet Biblical monotheism doesn't necessarily presuppose the existence of only one God; it seems rather to demand allegiance to only one God. It's entirely possible that the Biblical authors thought that there were indeed other deities out there; it's just that Israel was absolutely forbidden to worship them. Furthermore, consider a passage like 1 Kings 22:19, wherein the prophet Micaiah reports: "I saw the Lord seated upon the Lord's throne, with all the host of heaven standing in attendance to the right and to the left of the Lord." I would bring this verse, and others like it (such as the very psalm you asked about) as evidence that the Biblical mind also conceived of other kinds of "divine beings," perhaps some kind of angels or other beings in the service of God. As I understand the Biblical text, this would not be a problem for its conception of monotheism: other kinds of divine beings or angels may exist, but they either serve the One God or at the very least they are not to be worshipped in any way on their own. Now, in later times, when monotheism began to mean "belief that only one Deity exists," these verse became problematic. Thus, sometimes Elohim got translated as "judges"- which it may in fact have meant, in the sense of "powerful beings"- or in the case of Psalm 82, as "angels" by some of the medieval commentators (for example, Ibn Ezra.) Psalm 82 might make sense either way: God is taking either humans or divine beings- prosecuting angels, perhaps, as in the book of Job- to task for not acting in a perfectly just and righteous way. In the case of Genesis1:26, Elohim says in the plural: "Let us make humans in our image." I doubt that this means that Creation was done by committee, but it could mean that God said to the angels, as it were, "let's make humans with a spark of [or: affinity to] the Divine." Alternatively, it could simply be a grammatical anomaly; even though Elohim is a singular noun, in this case it's taking plural verb forms and other modifiers. In either case, the sense of Biblical monotheism is preserved. The whole subject of the names of God in the Hebrew Bible is a complex and important topic. I would recommend looking at either Harper's Bible Dictionary or The Interpreter's Bible Dictionary or some other standard Bible reference for more information. For an excellent and provocative look at the meaning of monotheism in Biblical times, I strongly recommend the book Creation and the Persistence of Evil, by Jon Levenson. NJL |
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