In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Gen 1:1
Elohim, the Hebrew word for God, appears in the very first sentence in
the Bible.
He is the one who began it all.
He created the heavens and the earth and separated light from darkness,
the water from the dry land, and the night from day.
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Christ
Holds It All Together
15-18 We look at this Son and see
the God who cannot be seen. We look at this Son and see God’s original purpose
in everything created. For everything, absolutely everything, above and below,
visible and invisible, rank after rank after rank of angels—everything
got started in him and finds its purpose in him. He was there before any of it
came into existence and holds it all together right up to this moment. And when
it comes to the church, he organizes and holds it together, like a head does a
body.
Colossians
1:15-18
The Message (MSG)
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“This ancient name for God contains the idea of God’s creative power as
well as his authority and sovereignty”, Ann Spangler in The Names of God.
Elohim is the plural form of El or Eloah, a name for God that the
Hebrews borrowed from the Canaanites, and also one of the oldest designations
for divinity in the world.
The word El can refer either to the true God or to pagan gods and it is
used more than 200 times in the Hebrew Bible.
But the word Elohim is used more than 2500 times in the Hebrew Bible.
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24-29 “The God who made the world and everything in it, this Master of sky and
land, doesn’t live in custom-made shrines or need the human race to run errands
for him, as if he couldn’t take care of himself. He makes the creatures; the
creatures don’t make him. Starting from scratch, he made the entire human race
and made the earth hospitable, with plenty of time and space for living so we
could seek after God, and not just grope around in the dark but actually find
him. He doesn’t play hide-and-seek with us. He’s not remote; he’s near.
We live and move in him, can’t get away from him! One of your poets said it
well: ‘We’re the God-created.’ Well, if we are the God-created, it doesn’t make
a lot of sense to think we could hire a sculptor to chisel a god out of stone
for us, does it?
Acts 17:24-29
The Message
(MSG)
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According to Ann Spangler “Its plural form is used not to indicate a
belief in many gods but to emphasize the majesty of the one true God. He is the
God of gods, the highest of all”.
If Elohim be regarded as
derived from El,
its original meaning would be "the strong one" or "the foremost
one", "to be in front" or "the mighty one", "to
be mighty" (On Genesis, I, 1).
Or, finally "He
after whom one strives", "Who is the goal of all human aspiration and
endeavour", "to whom one has recourse in distress or when one is in
need of guidance", "to who one attaches oneself closely”.
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Ignoring God Leads to a
Downward Spiral
18-23 But
God’s angry displeasure erupts as acts of human mistrust and wrongdoing and
lying accumulate, as people try to put a shroud over truth. But the basic
reality of God is plain enough. Open your eyes and there it is! By taking a
long and thoughtful look at what God has created, people have always been able
to see what their eyes as such can’t see: eternal power, for instance, and the
mystery of his divine being. So nobody has a good excuse. What happened was
this: People knew God perfectly well, but when they didn’t treat him like God,
refusing to worship him, they trivialized themselves into silliness and
confusion so that there was neither sense nor direction left in their lives.
They pretended to know it all, but were illiterate regarding life. They traded
the glory of God who holds the whole world in his hands for cheap figurines you
can buy at any roadside stand.
24-25 So
God said, in effect, “If that’s what you want, that’s what you get.” It wasn’t
long before they were living in a pigpen, smeared with filth, filthy inside and
out. And all this because they traded the true God for a fake god, and
worshiped the god they made instead of the God who made them—the God we bless,
the God who blesses us. Oh, yes!
Romans 1:18-25
The Message
(MSG)
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The name Elohim is
unique to Hebraic thinking and it occurs only in Hebrew and in no other ancient
Semitic language.
The masculine plural
ending does not mean gods when it used to referring to the true God of Israel
because the name is mainly used with singular verb forms and adjectives and
pronouns in the singular.
But if we consider
the Trinity, the form does allow for the plurality within the Godhead.
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3-7 God made that vow, even though he’d finished his part before the
foundation of the world. Somewhere it’s written, “God rested the seventh day,
having completed his work,” but in this other text he says, “They’ll never be
able to sit down and rest.” So this promise has not yet been fulfilled. Those
earlier ones never did get to the place of rest because they were disobedient.
God keeps renewing the promise and setting the date as today, just as he
did in David’s psalm, centuries later than the original invitation:
Today,
please listen,
don’t
turn a deaf ear . . .
Hebrews 4:3-7
The Message
(MSG)
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In the traditional
Jewish view, Elohim is used as the Name of God as the Creator and the Judge of
the universe.
What can you observe about God from the world He made?
What kind of person is the God, Mighty Creator you can read about in the Genesis?
