Mi Yodeya is a question and answer site for those who base their lives on Jewish law and tradition and anyone interested in learning more. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
Reading many questions relating to mine and the comments that were given, made me wonder.
When Elohim thought of creating the human being (Bereshit 1:26) He spoke (singular): “Let Us make… and after Our Tzelem and Our Demut” But verse 27 and 5:1 shows that Elohim made (singular) the human being after His Tzelem and His Demut. Why did Elohim refer to Us and Our, when in fact it was He and His?
"Eloha" means a force. Pagans at the time believed there was one force in charge of life, one in charge of death, one in charge of day, one in charge of night, and so on.
So the Jewish creation story is stressing that one God is "all-forces", i.e. in charge of everything, making everything. Hence the plural.
Once God made the earth, the elements were in place for a natural progression, thus God says, "let the earth produce vegetation." And so on, until the animals are around. At that point God turns to the earth and says -- "to make humans, you [earth] & I -- i.e. we -- need to work together." The body is following the progression of nature, but the soul comes from God.
(That's Nachmanides' reading.)
The term is similar to the "royal We" that is used in English. That is, it is a matter of referring to the ruler in the plural. Consider the French usage of "vous" for you (plural) or as a sign of respect. In actuality, we see other usages as
The Lord said to Moses, “See, I have made thee a god אֶלהִים, (Elohim) to Pharaoh, and Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet.”
(Exodus 7:1)
Similarly we see when speaking about a slave belonging to the master, we have the plural term ba'alim used, even though it refers to a single master. I have a posting about this elsewhere but do not have the time to search it out.
