What does Elohim mean?

Question 2024

The name Elohim is the very first word for God that any reader of the Bible meets, since it stands in the opening verse of Genesis where we are told that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. That word God, behind the English, is the Hebrew name Elohim, and it sets the tone for everything that follows. Before we are told anything about God’s promises or His dealings with one nation, we are shown the mighty Maker of all things, and the name Elohim carries that note of power and majesty.

Where the personal name YHWH speaks of God as the faithful covenant Lord, the name Elohim speaks of God as the strong Creator over all. The two names work together throughout the Old Testament, and learning what the name Elohim means gives you a firmer grip on who the Bible says God is from its first page onward.

What the name Elohim means

The name Elohim is generally understood to come from a root carrying the idea of strength or power. When the Old Testament wants to speak of God as the mighty One who stands over creation, this is the word it reaches for. It is a general name rather than a personal one, in the way that the word king is general while a royal name is personal. So the name Elohim can describe the true God, and in a few places the same word is even used of false gods or of human rulers acting with authority, which only underlines that its basic sense is mighty one or one who holds power.

When the Bible applies the name Elohim to the living God, however, it lifts the word to its fullest height. He is not one mighty being among others but the Mighty One, the Creator from whom every other power derives. This is why Genesis opens with the name Elohim rather than with the personal name. Before God draws near to a single family, He is shown as the Maker of everything, and the name Elohim announces that truth at the very threshold of Scripture.

Why the name Elohim is plural in form

One feature of the name Elohim puzzles many readers when they first notice it. The word is plural in its grammatical form, since the ending im in Hebrew normally marks a plural, as it does in the word cherubim. Yet when the name Elohim refers to the true God, it almost always takes a singular verb. Genesis does not say the gods created, it says God created, with a singular verb attached to a plural-form name.

The best explanation among conservative scholars is that this is a plural of majesty or fullness, a way of expressing the greatness and completeness of God rather than a count of several gods. The plural form gathers up everything that mighty power could mean and pours it into the one God. The name Elohim therefore says, in its very shape, that the fullness of all might belongs to Him.

Many readers also hear in the plural form of the name Elohim a quiet hint of something the New Testament will make plain, namely that the one God exists eternally as Father, Son and Spirit. We should be careful not to claim too much from grammar alone, yet the plural name sits comfortably with the later revelation of the triune God, and it is no accident that God says, Let us make man in our image. This thread is followed more fully in the studies on the doctrine of the Trinity and whether the Trinity appears in the Old Testament.

The name Elohim and the work of creation

It is fitting that the name Elohim governs the creation account, because creating from nothing is the supreme display of might. No creature can speak a world into being. When Genesis repeats again and again that God said, and it was so, the name standing behind that God is Elohim, the One whose word alone is enough to call light, sea and sky into existence. The name Elohim and the act of creation belong together so closely that to confess God as Elohim is to confess Him as Maker.

This matters for how we see ourselves and the world. If the name Elohim is true, then nothing that exists is an accident, and nothing stands outside His authority. The heavens and the earth are not eternal rivals to God but His handiwork, dependent on Him for every moment of their being. The same mighty power that made all things upholds them still, and the creature owes its Maker glad worship rather than rebellion.

The strength carried by the name Elohim also reassures the believer. The God who flung the stars into place is not strained by our troubles. When Scripture wants to comfort the weary it often points back to creation, reminding us that the One who made the ends of the earth does not grow faint. The various perfections that make up His greatness are drawn together in the study of how God’s attributes relate to one another, and the name Elohim stands near the centre of them all.

How the name Elohim differs from YHWH and Adonai

Reading the Old Testament well means noticing which name for God the writer has chosen. The name Elohim tends to appear where the emphasis falls on God as Creator and ruler over all peoples, the mighty One whose reach is universal. The personal name YHWH, printed LORD in our English Bibles, tends to appear where the emphasis falls on God in covenant with His people, the faithful One who keeps His promises. The fuller treatment of the personal name YHWH shows how that name carries the note of self-existence and faithfulness.

The title Adonai, meaning Lord or Master, adds yet another colour, stressing God’s right to command and our place as servants. The Hebrew writers move between the name Elohim, the name YHWH and the title Adonai with great care, and the changes are rarely accidental. When Genesis chapter two begins to tell the story of the garden, it pairs the two and speaks of the LORD God, joining YHWH with the name Elohim, so that the mighty Creator and the faithful covenant Lord are seen to be one and the same God.

These compound uses guard us against a thin view of God. He is not the Creator in one mood and the covenant Lord in another. The same God who is mighty as Elohim is faithful as YHWH, and the name Elohim never lets us forget that the One who makes promises is also the One who made the world and has the power to keep every word He gives.

Where this name appears beyond Genesis

Although the name Elohim opens the Bible, it is far from confined to the creation account. It runs through the whole Old Testament wherever the writers wish to lift our eyes to the greatness of God. The psalmists cry out to the strong One when enemies press in, and the prophets appeal to His might when they call a wavering people back to faith. In the book of Job, when God finally answers out of the whirlwind, the questions He asks about the foundations of the earth and the boundaries of the sea are an extended display of what it means to be the mighty Maker. The created order itself becomes a long sermon on the greatness of the God who made it.

Even the way the Hebrew writers describe false worship leans on this word. When they speak of the gods of the nations, they use the same term, not to grant those idols any real power, but to expose the emptiness of trusting in things that were made. The contrast is sharp. The living God is the Maker, while the idols are the made. To worship anything other than the true Mighty One is to bow before a thing that cannot create, cannot speak and cannot save. The Old Testament presses Israel again and again to remember which God actually holds power, and which so-called gods are no gods at all.

The fear of the Mighty One

Knowing God as the mighty Maker stirs a particular response, which the Bible calls the fear of God. This is not the cringing dread of a slave before a tyrant but the awe of a creature standing before the One whose word made the stars. To live under this truth is to feel small in the best possible way, lifted out of our self-importance and set in our proper place before the Creator. The fear of the LORD, the writers tell us, is the beginning of wisdom, and that reverence grows naturally from seeing God as the One whose power has no rival anywhere in heaven or on earth.

This awe is not meant to push us away but to draw us near with reverence. The same power that made the heavens stooped to make a covenant with one family, and at last took flesh in Jesus. A right fear of the Creator and a glad trust in the Saviour are not enemies. They grow together, so that the more we grasp the greatness of the God who made us, the more astonishing His mercy appears. The mighty Maker who set the planets in their courses is also the Father who runs to welcome returning sinners home.

So the word that opens Scripture is not a cold piece of theology but an invitation to wonder. Every sunrise, every storm, every living thing testifies to the power gathered up in this name, and the believer learns to read the world as the handiwork of the God he worships.

So, now what?

Knowing what the name Elohim means changes the way you read the opening of the Bible and steadies your view of the whole. From the first verse you are dealing with the mighty Maker of all things, not a local god or a force within nature. When the rest of Scripture speaks of God’s promises and His patience, you read it knowing that the One making the promises is the same Elohim who spoke the worlds into being.

It also gives shape to worship. To honour God as Elohim is to bow before the One whose power has no limit and whose word made everything you can see. That truth puts our worries in their place, since the God we bring them to is the Creator who upholds the universe by His word. The plural fullness in the name Elohim also draws the believer toward the triune God, Father, Son and Spirit, who together are the one Mighty One.

And it points forward to Jesus, through whom, the New Testament says, all things were made. The creating power gathered up in the name Elohim belongs to the Son as fully as to the Father. So the word that opens Genesis opens onto the Saviour, and the God who made you is the God who came to redeem you.

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Genesis 1:1