It’s Not the Trinity: Gen 1:26 (Spiritual Realm, Part 1) - Episode 004

## Introduction

- Welcome to the fourth episode of Genesis Marks the Spot.  My name is Carey Griffel and I apologize at getting this episode out a little late—I ended up losing my voice and am now just getting it back, so if I sound a little funny that’s why.  Thank you to those who have been praying for me and I appreciate all the support.  This is going to be the first episode in a small series where we are going to tackle the subject of the spiritual realm.  Last time we were talking about the book, *The Return of the Gods*, and one of the points I said was an essential take-away from the book was that Cahn takes the “gods of the nations” seriously.  So does that mean that I think the gods of the nations are “real”?  Yes, yes it does.  And we’re going to start to dive into that in this episode.  Some of you probably already know what I’m going to talk about, but I don’t want to assume that level of knowledge from all of my listeners, so I’m going to try to start basic.
- First, though, I want to thank the Two Trees Podcast for mentioning Genesis Marks the Spot on their recent episode about the Tree of Life.  If you like Bible Project content, I highly recommend the Two Trees Podcast as they take the same kind of trajectory of contextual biblical study and they really do a great job in looking at it in the framework of application and how can we read the Bible in these ways while still intimately connecting it with our lives.
- All right.  Now let’s get into some particular details of where I’m sourcing my information for this particular episode.  Please keep in mind that just because I share a resource, that doesn’t mean that this is the only place to go to find that information.  Key to this information from my own background has been the work of the Semitic scholar Dr. Michael Heiser.  His PhD dissertation relates to this subject along with a number of journal articles and he has written some popular-level books which are very approachable.  The more scholarly edition of his main work—that means that you’re going to be faced with a lot of footnotes on every page—is called *The Unseen Realm:  Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible*.  There is a second book that is the same material for those who do not wish to be inundated with footnotes and this is called *Supernatural:  What the Bible Teaches about the Unseen World and Why It Matters*.  Dr. Heiser is the scholar behind the Naked Bible Podcast and he teaches courses at the AWKNG School of Theology.  In addition, you can find a whole host of wonderful lectures and interviews if you search his name on Youtube.  So this is all really accessible material.
- Youtube is actually how I got into Dr. Heiser’s content at first—he got on my radar because he was a guest on Coast-to-Coast AM, yep that middle-of-the-night radio show that often features guests who talk about their alien abductions and such things.  I actually wasn’t listening to the show myself, but through his appearances there I was convinced to watch some of his lectures on Youtube.  Now, these were five-to-eight hour lectures and I was intrigued…an eight hour lecture on the ANE context of the Bible?  I had no idea there were such things out there amidst the click bait of Youtube.  This was somewhere around 2015.
- Of course, I was pretty dubious, so not only did it take some time to get into the videos, it took me a long time to process them.  It was challenging to take them seriously, to be honest.  As I mentioned in my first episode, though by this time frame I had changed my views, I was raised in the LDS church and that still colored my thinking.  This meant, amongst other things, that I had a natural distrust inbuilt for anyone’s ability to really conclusively know much about the time centered around the Bible.  The reason for my distrust is that I had been taught there was a Great Apostacy after the apostles died.  The evidence given for the apostacy is that in the first centuries after Christ’s resurrection, there were many different ideas floating around—heretics of all stripes, there wasn’t agreement on anything (or so I was taught), and this was all due to the fact that the apostles had died and along with them, the office of the priesthood had vanished from the earth and so there was no unity, no cohesiveness, no priesthood power to keep truth alive, so it vanished and everyone went their own way.  The idea accompanying this is that surely God wouldn’t allow such chaos—everything in Scripture ought to be clear and easily interpreted.
    - At least from a boots-on-the-ground-local-Sunday-school-teacher’s perspective, part of this thinking about apostacy was, I believe, attached to a vague idea of the rise of the Catholic church…those popes were surely not the successors of Peter!  So therefore, an apostacy occurred somewhere between Peter and the Roman Popes.  (Note that the Catholic-centered idea that there had to be a successor was still accepted and assumed.)
    - Leaving aside the assumption that there had to be a direct descendent of the bishop of Rome leading the church, this was still not a nuanced view of history, not unlike what we’ve already discussed in previous episodes.  Where and when, exactly, it all went awry in apostacy was never entirely clear, though, because it was said that there were certain people in the centuries post-Christ who still had the right ideas and were trying to keep the church alive.  It’s just that the “wicked consensus” put them down and “wrongly” declared them heretics.  (Of course, from an orthodox Christian position, it is exactly the opposite.  For clarity’s sake, when I use the term “orthodox” in this podcast episode, I’m using it with the lower-case o; I’m not referring to the eastern church.)
        - One example of these stalwart defenders of the faith, according to LDS belief, would be Arius, who is, according to orthodox Christian tradition a heretic, but who according to someone from the LDS faith was actually one of the last bastions of truth regarding the nature of Christ as late as 325 AD.  Arius believed that Christ was not eternal, that Jesus was a created being and not God himself.  The Council of Nicaea, from which we get the Nicaean Creed, denounced Arius a heretic.  Christianity said that Arius was wrong; the LDS church claims he was actually right.
        - We recently had Christmas, so maybe you’ve seen those memes of the real St. Nick decking Arius a good one at the Council of Nicaea.  That probably didn’t happen, but it makes for some great memes.
        - Anyway, to make this point crystal clear—from an LDS perspective, Arius wasn’t a heretic—it was the Council of Nicaea and the doctrine of the Trinity which was in the wrong.
        - I took LDS religion classes in college and Arius was brought up as “proof” against the doctrine of the Trinity.  Of course the Nicaean Creed is one of those things that orthodox Christianity is built upon.  When someone from the LDS faith doesn’t understand that a professing Christian doesn’t want to accept their claim as being Christian, this is why…because an LDS person does not affirm any of the creeds of the early church.  *None* of the early creeds are correct according to the LDS church.
        - I’m laying all of this out because I know that I have a mixed audience who might not be familiar with one side or the other here.
    - I grew up thinking early church history is not to be trusted.  It’s not just the creeds that were the problem.  Somehow in some way, the Bible became corrupted.  From an LDS perspective, the idea of how Scripture works is a very wooden one—or perhaps *metallic* is a better adjective—after all, they have the Book of Mormon which was supposed to have been translated directly from golden plates.  The point of the golden plates is that they were written by someone in antiquity, hidden away, and then their hiding spot was revealed to Joseph Smith who then was supernaturally gifted in order to translate them.
    - That’s not the kind of situation we have when it comes to the Bible.  The Bible’s history isn’t neat and perfect like golden plates that have been untouched for centuries.  But the Bible’s preservation is more incredible for that fact.  We have thousands of copies of handwritten biblical manuscripts—and though there are transmission errors, spelling changes, and other minor variations in the texts, we can see that the later copies are incredibly faithful to the earlier ones.  And even though we don’t have any of the original manuscripts that were written, we have some very early instances of the NT manuscripts.  And for the Old Testament, we can look at the evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls, most of which predate Christ.
    - So if we can trust our OT manuscripts, there’s no reason we can’t trust our NT manuscripts, as well.  There is no evidence of malicious changes to the text.  Joseph Smith claimed that the Bible wasn’t —quote—”translated correctly”—but you see even the way he puts that suggests his biases.  *He* was the one “translating” his text from one language into English.  And yes, we do need to translate the Bible into English, but here’s the thing—there are people who can read the biblical manuscripts we have; they don’t always have to be *translated* in order to draw out the meaning because there are people who can read them.  Translation means you are putting the text from one language into another.  We English readers read a translation because we’re not reading Greek or Hebrew.  People who read Greek or Hebrew don’t need a translation.  Even Joseph Smith couldn’t read his golden plates.  He needed to translate them in order to understand them.  So he believed that the Bible was similar…translation meshing into translation meshing into translation.
        - In the past, I labored under a common misperception which says that the Bible was translated over and over and over, like a game of telephone, going from one language to the next to the next to the next.   This telephone-game-suggestion has errors creeping into the text with each subsequent translation from one language to the next, errors compounding each time.  But that’s not the way Bible translation works.  When someone is translating the Bible into a different language, they’re not translating it from an intermediate language.  ….I should say that they’re not *usually* doing this.  Probably there are translations out there that translate from an English Bible into another language.  But that’s not common.  What usually happens is that the translators are looking at the oldest manuscripts as well as the most common ones that we have in order to translate the Bible into their target language.  They aren’t taking the English KJV and translating it directly and solely from there.  Rather, translators are able to look at all of the ancient manuscripts we have and translate from those.
    - Anyway, my point in going into all of this detail about what I believed from my LDS upbringing is that the first half of my life I had this very mistaken idea that a lot of true information about the Bible and the early church simply couldn’t be known, that throughout time even from the early days of Christianity, major errors had crept in and had been codified into what the vast majority of Christianity believed.  What I had been taught is that yes there is truth there—we could look to people like Arius and see that truth was trying to cling on, but it didn’t win out in the end until 1500 or so years after Arius when Joseph Smith had his visitations.  Of course, I realize now how much cherry picking of data was going on with this idea.  People like Arius were in the vast, vast minority—not because they were holding on to truth in a sea of lies, but because *they* were the ones who were mistaken.
        - Taking another moment on Arius since we are here.  I don’t want you to just take it on my claim that he really didn’t have a leg to stand on with what he was saying.  What was his proof that Jesus was a created being?  He relied on Proverbs 8, the text of Lady Wisdom, connected to Jesus.  The argument went, if Lady Wisdom is created, as Prov 8 seems to suggest, and if Jesus is Wisdom impersonated, then Jesus must also be created.
            - This is a pretty direct logical proof that we can examine.  If Lady Wisdom was created, and if Jesus is said to be this Wisdom, then Jesus was created.  The idea then is that if Jesus is created, then he is not a person of the Trinity.
            - Let’s look at it closely.
            - This is what Prov 8 says about Wisdom:
            - Proverbs 8:22–31 (ESV)
            22“The LORD possessed me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old.
            23Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth.
            24When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water.
            25Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth,
            26before he had made the earth with its fields, or the first of the dust of the world.
            27When he established the heavens, I was there; when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,
            28when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep,
            29when he assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth,
            30then I was beside him, like a master workman, and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always,
            31rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the children of man.
            - That’s a beautiful passage.  But earlier in the Psalm, wisdom is called a woman, and so how does this relate to Jesus?
            - The way people go to connect this is usually John 1:1:
            - John 1:1 (ESV)
            1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
            - The word there is the *Logos*, which is connected to the concept of wisdom.  It’s not the same word that is used in Prov 8, but it is **conceptually** linked.  In Greek, *logos* means “word” and wisdom is “*sophia*.”
            - I’m going to turn to Bible Knowledge Commentary for some thoughts on this:
            - Of course He *[meaning, Christ]* does reveal God’s wisdom to believers (1 Cor. 1:30) and in Him is all wisdom and knowledge (Col. 2:3), but Proverbs 8:22–31 gives no indication that it is Christ who is referred to as wisdom. If that were so, then all other references to wisdom in Proverbs should refer to Christ too, which is unlikely. It is preferable to see wisdom spoken of here figuratively as a *personification of God’s attribute of wisdom*.
            
            *Sid S. Buzzell, “Proverbs,” in The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures, ed. J. F. Walvoord and R. B. Zuck, vol. 1 (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1985), 922.*
            - And here’s another thought—was there any time when God’s wisdom wouldn’t have existed?  Of course not.  So *nothing* in this proof text makes sense in order to make a claim that Christ was created.
            - If this is some of the best that can be offered in denial of Christ’s timelessness, it’s honestly pretty weak.
            - This doesn’t get us straight over to the idea of the Trinity, but one step at a time.
- All right, all the way back to my discovery of Dr. Heiser’s work in 2015.  As I said, by this time in my life, I’d already come to the conclusion that the LDS church wasn’t what it claimed to be.  But I still felt like there wasn’t a whole lot I could know about the early days of the church.  And the one thing I couldn’t understand as far as orthodoxy went was the Trinity.  No one had been able to explain it to me in a way that didn’t feel like cherry-picking verses.  But it seemed that was the best there was out there because, again, I thought, who could possibly untangle this rats nest of history?
- So, I listened to several of these long lectures on Youtube by Dr. Heiser.  He didn’t *sound* like a crack pot, but again…how could I possibly trust that he wasn’t just making it up as much anyone else?  I listened to the lectures multiple times, over months, ruminating on what I was hearing and looking up odd bits of information.  This was before I had his book…I think that was the year it was coming out and I didn’t know about it.
- The more I listened, the more I realized I couldn’t refute what he was saying—and it started making sense of things I’d always wondered about, that had always been sticking points for me.  The clincher was—I had no idea how much of my modern context I was reading back into the Bible.  Reading the text, instead, with the perspective of the original author and readers—suddenly things that seemed bizarre and outlandish made total and complete sense.
    - I couldn’t believe I finally had access to this level of information.  It was *life-changing* in so many ways.
- So now you know a bit as to why I’m so thrilled about reading the Bible in its own context and why I feel it’s so important to teach other people about this and that it’s quite accessible information for anyone with access to the internet at minimum.

## Transition to the Topic

- So I’ve been talking a lot about the Trinity.  I want to establish this key feature very solidly here because it’s very important to our understanding of the Bible.  The Bible is the revelation of God himself.  So it’s pretty essential that we get a good grip on who God is in some sense.  That’s not to say that we are going to be able to fully understand his nature—but we can understand his revelation, which is information that is put in our human level for us to grasp.  That doesn’t mean it’s always easy, but it’s there for us to look at and wrestle with.
- But it’s going to take me more than one episode to fully unpack the information I want to share.  And it’s a bigger story than you might even think.  For the moment, let’s turn to Gen 1:26-27.  I’m going to read this in the ESV.

## Genesis 1:26-27

- Genesis 1:26–27 (ESV)
26Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
27So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
- End quote.  “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.”
- This is the Trinity, right?
    - That’s a common understanding of this passage.  It is often assumed that this is the Father, speaking to the other two members of the Trinity, or perhaps the Father speaking to the Son.  There are, however, some potential hang ups with this interpretation.  And, it’s also a later interpretation.
    - When I have seen this brought up, there is almost always at least one person in the virtual crowd who will get angry at the assertion that this could be anything *but* the Trinity.  They seem to believe that by not taking Gen 1:26 to reference the Trinity, then this is a denial of the Trinity itself.  I assure you this is not the case, at least not from my stance.  I am quite convinced of the evidence of the Trinity, and I do not need this verse in order to make the case for it.  I’m going to save that discussion for next time because I think this verse speaks to a different aspect of the divine realm.
- But we have some unpacking to do in order to really get to the meaning here.
- First, let’s look at as solid a defense of this being the Trinity as we can manage.  In order to do this, we’re going to pull in some information from earlier in Genesis 1 and we’re going to talk about Hebrew because this is part of the argument that is made.
    - The word in Genesis chapter 1 that is translated as “God” in our English Bibles is the word “*elohim*.”  In Genesis 2, God is referred to as “*yhwh elohim*,” which is why you suddenly start reading “LORD God” in English rather than just “God” which we see in Gen 1.  Some scholars who adhere in some form to the “documentary hypothesis” say this is evidence of multiple writers at different times.  Doesn’t really matter to our topic here, though, since we are going to focus on that word “*elohim*.”  If you’ve never heard of the documentary hypothesis before, that’s okay, we’ll get to it at some point.
    - In Hebrew—since this is a Hebrew word, after all—*elohim* “looks” plural.  I mean that it has a plural ending.  In English, we usually add the s sound at the end of a word to make it plural.  Pony and ponies.  Dog and dogs.  It’s similar in Hebrew; they add a sound at the end of a word to make it plural.  The normal singular form of *elohim* is *elo*-*ah or elo-hey.*
    - So in Gen 1:1, we have “in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” and that word “God,” that’s *elohim*.  Now, a *little bit* of knowledge is dangerous.  It’s dangerous because you might come to some conclusions that you wouldn’t if you had *more* than a little bit of knowledge.  If all you knew is that “*elohim*” seems to be a plural word, then you might be tempted to translate this verse as, “in the beginning, *the gods* created the heavens and the earth.”  In English, the only change in the two sentences is that I changed *God* to *the gods*.  “God created” vs “the gods created.”  But there’s a big problem with translating it that way because the verb in Hebrew is singular.  And I’m sorry if you’re a little bit grammar-adverse and don’t want to think about how language works…that’s part of the risk of listening to this podcast, I’m afraid.  But you might remember from school the subject of a sentence has got to “agree” in form with the verb, or the action of the sentence.  I can say that “*I run*” but “*they ran*.”  See that change from run to ran?  That’s what I’m talking about.  There is not always an obvious change in the word, though.  There is no visible or audible change in the sound “created” in English from “*God created*” and “*the gods created*,” but in Hebrew we can clearly see that the verb *“created”* is singular.  So we cannot possibly translate the sentence as *“the gods created”* because grammatically that makes no sense in Hebrew.
    - Okay, so that out of the way, how do we have a plural-sounding word that acts in a singular manner?
        - Well, one answer, which Arnold Fruchenbaum suggests in his Ariel Bible Commentary, is that this pluralization of the word into *elohim* is an example of God’s complex nature.  It’s one way we see the triunity of God being expressed in the text.  Fructenbaum states:
        - the fact is that the plurality of *Elohim* does open the door to a plurality in the Godhead. It should be made clear that the word itself does not prove plurality, and less so does it prove a Trinity. Nevertheless, it clearly opens the door to a concept of the plurality in the Godhead.
        
        *Arnold G. Fruchtenbaum, Ariel’s Bible Commentary: The Book of Genesis, 1st ed. (San Antonio, TX: Ariel Ministries, 2008), 33.*
        - As he says directly, it’s important to note he’s not using the word to *prove* anything; nonetheless, he sees it as some important evidence.  It’s my opinion—and not just mine—that he is reading this into the text rather than seeing it there to begin with because the word *elohim* is not the only word that we see used in this way where we have a singular word that looks plural.  I’ll come back to that later in the episode.  One thing to note, again, is that we must look at the verb of a sentence to see what’s going on with the subject of the sentence—whether the subject is singular or plural.
    - Okay so let’s take our newfound grammar knowledge back into verse 26 where it is says, “Let us make…”  Those three words in English are one verb in Hebrew.  The reason we can put the word “us” in there is that it is built in to the Hebrew verb.  This form of the verb is only used in the first person—either for “me” or “us,” and the verb here is plural, so we know that it is “us” rather than “me.”  *Let us make*…
    - What are we monotheists supposed to do with this?  It sounds like more than one person is making mankind.
    - I want you to keep in mind, though, this plural verb isn’t the creative act itself…it’s the *call* to creative action.  In this case, it’s a call to a group.  This is called the cohortative form of the verb.  It’s an expression of exhortation—a call to action, not the action itself.
    - But back to Fruchtenbaum.  He says that, just like with the term *elohim*, this evidence, quote, “opens the door, again, to the plurality in the Godhead, as was true with the word *Elohim*. While rabbinic theology claims that God was speaking to angels, there is no such implication in the text. It could not refer to angels, since God alone did the work of creation.”
    *Arnold G. Fruchtenbaum, Ariel’s Bible Commentary: The Book of Genesis, 1st ed. (San Antonio, TX: Ariel Ministries, 2008), 56.*
    - So that’s about it for the interpretation that this is God talking within himself.  The outstanding points of this interpretation is that it has the benefit of simplicity and it seems clear to us when we already have the background knowledge of the Trinity.  But do keep in mind that it does *require* that background knowledge, so it may only *seem* like a more simplistic and direct explanation to us…if someone read this without the perspective of the Trinity pre-installed, it might not be as clear of a text as we assume.  Another point that some would see in its favor is that it’s a *common* interpretation—at least in modern Christianity.  John Wesley, for instance, who led the revival amongst the Church of England which ended up as the foundation of the Methodists, taught this.
    - And of course we know that God created mankind in his image.  It says so directly in the next verse, verse 27, that this is what God did.  In verse 26, when it says “Let us make man after our image, after our likeness,” how could God be talking to anyone but himself, since he is the source of the image?  That’s a major point that needs to be addressed in any other interpretation.
- So we can see how this interpretation is a popular one.  But here in this podcast we are talking about reading the Bible in its ancient context.  So, what would the original reader have thought about this passage?  That’s the question we need to ask.  I’m going to suggest in the next episode that the doctrine of the Trinity is not solely dependent on Christian tradition; the concept of divine plurality did not simply pop up with the coming of Christ.  This idea pre-dated Christ.  So I cannot toss out the idea that this is, in fact, referencing a divine plurality.  Nothing that I have studied has formed a conclusive argument that this *cannot, in fact* “just” be the Father talking to the Son and the Spirit.  So if that’s your favored interpretation, then there you go.  Have at it.
    - Nonetheless, when all of the evidence is balanced together, I do think more is going on in this passage than meets the eye.  I would just caution everyone not to be too dogmatic about it either way.
- The first question I have is….Why is God announcing this to the other members of the Trinity?  For that matter, which member is speaking?
    - The members of the Trinity are co-eternal and co-omniscient.
    - People who take the Trinitarian view usually assume this is the Father speaking to the Son and/or the Spirit, but what about Jesus being the creator?  Why isn’t he the one speaking?
    - One possibility for why this “us” verb is included is that the writer wanted us to know that the Trinity—collective—is going to participate in the creation of humanity.  Perhaps this points out the fact that humanity is not in the image of only one member of the Trinity, but in the image of all of them; humanity has the attributes of each Trinitarian member.
- But then….What happens when we get to verse 27?
    - The plurality language goes away.  There is only a single creator.
    - Verse 26—God, singular, says, “Let us make—” plural.  “in our image, after our likeness,” still plural.  Skipping to verse 27—it says “so God created.”  Remember that’s *elohim*.  So *elohim* created.  Created, singular.  The word created is repeated three times in this verse.
        - Three times…I don’t see this often brought out in the defense of the Trinitarian position, but maybe the fact that it’s mentioning the creative act three times is that it mentions creating once for each member of the Trinity?
        - That’s a compelling argument from our Christian position, but the trick is…though I do think we have the basis for the Trinity in the OT, I don’t think anyone at the time would have read this passage and would have been thinking of a triparte God because there was not a well defined *trinitarian* understanding—as in, three persons of the Trinity.  You mostly get a binitarian understanding in the OT.  That’s two rather than three.  The Spirit is still definitely present as the third person, but no one was discussing it that directly.  So ultimately, to me the suggestion is strong that we are reading later understandings of the Trinity into the text here in Genesis.
            - Also, I will mention that the number *three* is a common reference to the divine.  That may not have anything to do with the number of members of the Trinity.  I mean, it might, too.  But no one in the OT was going around suggesting this definitively.
    - Okay, so even though God says to someone or other to “let us make….in our image…” when it actually comes down to the act of creating, only one person creates.  This seems to reflect back to God speaking, so if for argument’s sake we take the speaker to be the Father, then is only the Father creating?  That can’t be since Christ is seen to be the creator.
        - Colossians 1:16–18 (ESV)
        16For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.  **[I’m going to keep reading for a bit after this because I like it]**
        17And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
        18And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.
        - And of course we have John 1:
        - John 1:1–5 (ESV)
        1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
        2He was in the beginning with God.
        3All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.
        4In him was life, and the life was the light of men.
        5The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
        - I’ll also read Ephesians 3:8-10:
        - Ephesians 3:8–10 (ESV)
        8To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ,
        9and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things,
        10so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.
        - Ephesians tells us God created.  Colossians says Christ did it.  John says the Logos or Word was with God and was God and was the creator.  This is complex and confusing because the concept of the Trinity is rather difficult to wrap our minds around.  In fact, it’s pretty impossible.  But the language is as clear as I think it can be here.
        - And of course it’s clear that Christ is spoken as creator in the NT, but the OT references the Father.
        - Isaiah 64:8 (ESV)
        8But now, O LORD, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.
        - Anyway, my point here is not to get into explaining the mystery of the Trinity—something I am completely incapable of doing—but rather to say that when we look throughout Scripture, we can’t restrict the creative act to a specific person of the Trinity and it doesn’t seem that we can restrict the *speaking act* in Gen 1:26 to a single person of the Trinity, either.  The singular “God said” in v. 26 seems parallel to the singular “God created” in v. 27.
- Okay, let’s look at another place where people commonly see the Trinity on display in the OT.  We’re going to read some of Isaiah chapter 6.

## Isaiah 6:8

- Isaiah 6:1–4 (ESV)
1In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple.
2Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew.
3And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!”
4And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke.
- This is a vision of God in his throne room.  He’s sitting on a throne, with seraphim around him.  Seraphim are throne guardians.  Note the wings.  Angels in the Bible didn’t have wings, but seraphim do.
- Note also v. 3, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.”
    - Could this be referencing the Trinity?  It’s got three “holies.”  This is a common interpretation, and it’s a nice little thing to notice.  Let’s move down to v. 8.
- Isaiah 6:8 (ESV)
8And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here I am! Send me.”
- “Whom will go for us?”   Is that “us” the Trinity, once again?  Remember, this is in the throne room.  God is sitting in an assembly of some type.  He gets a response from Isaiah who says, “Send me!”  As an aside, I’ve seen the idea, at least present in the LDS church, that this is how Christ volunteered to come to be the Savior.  That’s certainly not the usual explanation in orthodox Christian circles, even if they take this passage to be referencing the Trinity.
- Back to Isaiah.  Here is a quote from Bible Knowledge Commentary—I’ve been getting some really good use out of this resource in my podcast so far:
- God asked, Whom shall I send? And who will go for Us? The word “Us” in reference to God hints at the Trinity (cf. “Us” in Gen. 1:26; 11:7). This doctrine, though not explicit in the Old Testament, is implicit for God is the same God in both Testaments.

The question “Who will go?” does not mean God did not know or that He only hoped someone would respond. He asked the question to give Isaiah, now cleansed, an opportunity for service. The prophet knew that the entire nation needed the same kind of awareness of God and cleansing of sin he had received. So he responded that he would willingly serve the Lord (Here am I).

*John A. Martin, “Isaiah,” in The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures, ed. J. F. Walvoord and R. B. Zuck, vol. 1 (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1985), 1045.*
- It **is** possible that the question of “who will go for us?” is a rhetorical one, that God is speaking out loud for the benefit of those present, that whoever is being sent out is the one who is going for God.
- It is also possible that God really is talking directly to a wider audience rather than just referencing himself.
- Okay, back to Gen 1:26.  Well, sort of.
- We’re actually going to look past Genesis 1 for some hints to this language.  We are going to turn to Genesis 11 where we see the same grammatical structure:
    
    ## Genesis 11:5-7
    
    - This is the Tower of Babel incident.
        - Genesis 11:5–7 (ESV)
        5And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built.
        6And the LORD said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.
        7Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.”
    - The LORD came down in verse 5, “the LORD came down to see the city,” and then in v. 6 the LORD speaks.  And in this address, in verse 7 he says “come, let us go down.”
    - Who is he talking to?  He already came down in v. 5.  Surely the other members of the Trinity would already be there?
        - God is summoning someone who is not already there.  And I hear that suggestion, that this is the “plural of majesty,” but we’ll get to why that can’t be the case.  And even if it was, again, he’s already down there.
- Now let’s turn backwards in our Bibles again, this time to Genesis 3.

### Genesis 3:5, 22

- This is the serpent talking to Eve, telling her it’s okay after all to eat the fruit.
- Genesis 3:1–5 (ESV)
1Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?”
2And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden,
3but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’ ”
4But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die.
5For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and **you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”**
- In this translation, the serpent says she will be like God, knowing good and evil.  She will be like *elohim*.  So far we’ve noticed that this word, *elohim*, references God even though it looks plural.
- Let’s skip down to verse 22.
- Genesis 3:22 (ESV)
22Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—”
- We’re going to stop there for a moment.  One of the phrases that we will take note of is, “knowing good and evil.”  That appears earlier in the chapter when the serpent is talking and now here we have God using the phrase.
- This would be easier if this wasn’t just audio and I could put the verses right next to each other for comparison.  I can’t do that in a podcast, so I’m going to read parts of verse 5 and verse 22 together.
    - v 5:  **“you will be like God [or *elohim*], knowing good and evil”**
    - v 22: **“become like one of us in knowing good and evil”**
    - Verse 5 v Verse 22 (”like God”, “like one of us”)
    - So now…who is the “us” in verse 22?
    - This seems parallel.
    - So, are we still talking about the Trinity?  That man will be like God, like one of “us,” one of the members of the Trinity, or like the Trinity as a whole?
- I want you to keep that thought for a moment.  For the moment I want to look, once again, at the term “*elohim*.”

## “Elohim”

- How is the word *elohim* used in the Bible?  To what does it refer?
- Things That are Called Elohim—I’m going to bring up six examples….
    - Obviously we have YHWH, the God of Israel.
        - Genesis 2 refers to God as “LORD God,” that’s YHWH Elohim.
        - Deuteronomy 4:35 (ESV)
        35To you it was shown, that you might know that the LORD is God; there is no other besides him.
        - The LORD—that’s YHWH—is God—that’s *elohim*.
    - We also have gods and goddesses worshiped by other nations who are called *elohim*.
        - Now, most of the time when the gods of the other nations are mentioned, they are being referenced collectively, so it’s *elohim* as a legitimate plural.  When they’re not being referenced collectively, they are often called by the singular form of the word, elo-ah or elo-hey.  Either way, it’s the same word.
            - Interestingly, we do have Judges 8:33, which says:
            - Judges 8:33 (ESV)
            33As soon as Gideon died, the people of Israel turned again and whored after the Baals and made Baal-berith their god.
                - The word “god” at the end is the plural form, *elohim*.
    - A third category of beings called *elohim* are demons, or *shedim.*  This is important when we look at how Paul talks about the gods of the nations.  He is referencing Deut 32.
    - Deuteronomy 32:17 (ESV)
    17They sacrificed to demons [*shedim*] that were no gods, to gods they had never known, to new gods that had come recently, whom your fathers had never dreaded.
    - *Elohim* is also used in conjunction with the Angel of the Lord or an angel in general
        - Genesis 21:17 (ESV)
        17And God heard the voice of the boy, and the **angel of God** called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, “What troubles you, Hagar? Fear not, for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is.
    - Our fifth option is a surprising one….the word *elohim* is used for the deceased prophet Samuel (1 Sam 28:13)
        - This is the story of Saul with the witch of Endor.
        - 1 Samuel 28:13–14 (ESV)
        13The king said to her, “Do not be afraid. What do you see?” And the woman said to Saul, “I see **a god [*elohim*]** coming up out of the earth.”
        14He said to her, “What is his appearance?” And she said, “An old man is coming up, and he is wrapped in a robe.” And Saul knew that it was Samuel, and he bowed with his face to the ground and paid homage.
        - Let’s sum up our options so far…we have the Lord God, we have the gods worshiped in other nations, we have demons, we have angels, and we have deceased spirits.
    - Before we move to our sixth and last category, I want to ask a question.  Can *elohim* refer to living humans?  We see it refer to Samuel, but he is dead, not alive.  He no longer belongs on this side of existence, so to speak.
        - Some claim that Moses is called an *elohim*.
            - Exodus 7:1
            And the LORD said to Moses, “See, I have made you like God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron shall be your prophet.
            - Note, this says ***like*** God.  Moses is using Aaron as a mouthpiece just as God can use a human like a mouthpiece.  So this isn’t calling Moses an *elohim* directly.
        - Some claim that the Israelite judges are called *elohim*.  The evidence here is from Ex 22:8, which talks about what to do when a thief cannot be found.
        - Exodus 22:8 (ESV)
        8If the thief is not found, the owner of the house shall **come near to God [*elohim*]** to show whether or not he has put his hand to his neighbor’s property.
        - The idea is that the owner of the house is coming before the Israelite judges to plead his case.  But judges aren’t specifically referenced in this passage; we have to read that into it.  It could just as well be saying that they are literally to come near to God, because God and only God is the only one who can pronounce a right judgment.  There really is no reason to suggest that this term is referring to the human judges rather than to God.  Yes, the owner of the house is going to stand before human judges because judgments are coming through the human representations of God.  But this is not necessarily calling the judges *elohim*…doing so would make this the outlier amongst all the other uses of the word which refer to beings whose rightful place is in the spiritual realm.
        - Okay, so on to my sixth type of being that is an *elohim*.
    - Our last category is members of YHWH’s heavenly council
        - Let’s read Ps 82
        - Psalm 82:1–8 (ESV)
        1God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of **the gods [*elohim*]** he holds judgment:
        2“How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked? Selah
        3Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute.
        4Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”
        5They have neither knowledge nor understanding, they walk about in darkness; all the foundations of the earth are shaken.
        6I said, **“You are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you;**
        7nevertheless, **like men you shall die**, and fall like any prince.”
        8Arise, O God, judge the earth; for you shall **inherit all the nations!**
        - So here we have God judging in the divine council, judging *elohim*.  He’s clearly not judging himself.  This isn’t the Trinity.  It absolutely cannot possibly be the Trinity, even though I’ve actually seen this put forth as an option.
        - At the end of the Psalm, it mentions God judging the earth, inheriting the nations.
        - Who else can this be but the other gods of the nations?  Yet, it also mentions that this is God’s divine council.
        - Now, a common interpretation is that God is judging men in Psalm 82, that these *elohim* are wicked men, the wicked judges that people claim are in Exodus 22.  Trouble with that is that, remember, no live, undead human is *clearly* referenced as an *elohim*.
        - And…we can turn to Psalm 89 to see reference to a *heavenly* court.
        - Psalm 89:5–7 (ESV)
        5Let the heavens praise your wonders, O LORD, your faithfulness in the assembly of the holy ones!
        6For who in the skies can be compared to the LORD? Who among the heavenly beings is like the LORD,
        7a God greatly to be feared in the council of the holy ones, and awesome above all who are around him?
- In general, most Christians don’t have a problem with the idea of God having a council of heavenly beings.
- Most Christians have an image of the heavenly realm that contains more than just God.  We believe in angels and we might even have an idea that there are strange creatures with a lot of eyes and wings and heads...well, once we get that far, maybe we get a little freaked out so we stop looking too closely.
- But if we take all of this together…suddenly we are faced with the fact that the gods of the nations are real beings.
- So, the big question …is this polytheism?
    - No.  It’s not. The little-g ‘gods’ are referred to as *elohim*, just as God is, but remember...
    - “*Elohim*” CAN BE plural, but it can also be singular, like “sheep” or “grass” in English.  You have to look specifically at the usage of the word in the sentence to figure out who or what it’s referring to.
    - This is where a lot of people, and most critics, get it wrong. “*Elohim*” does not directly translate to God, or YHWH. It is used to refer to him, but it is not his name/title/whatever
    - *Elohim* is better understood as a categorical term rather than a qualitative one. It refers to “those who live over there,” in the spiritual realm
    - By this definition, YHWH is AN *elohim*, but no other *elohim* is equal to YHWH (Deut 4:39)
    - Deuteronomy 4:39 (ESV)
    39know therefore today, and lay it to your heart, that the LORD is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath; there is no other.
    - I’m going to read a quote from *The Unseen Realm:*
    - Many scholars believe that Psalm 82 and other passages demonstrate that the religion of ancient Israel began as a polytheistic system and then evolved into monotheism. I reject that idea, along with any other explanations that seek to hide the plain reading of the text. In all such cases, the thinking is misguided. The problem is rooted in a mistaken notion of what exactly the word *elohim* means.
    
    Since *elohim* is so often translated *God*, we look at the Hebrew word the same way we look at capitalized G-o-d. When we see the word *God*, we instinctively think of a divine being with a unique set of attributes—omnipresence, omnipotence, sovereignty, and so on. But this is **not** how a biblical writer thought about the term. Biblical authors did not assign a specific set of attributes to the word *elohim*. That is evident when we observe how they used the word.
    
    *Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible, First Edition. (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2015), 29–30.*
    - End quote.
    - These kinds of things are why it is so difficult to translate terms—the definition of *elohim*  is not a one-to-one correspondence with the word “God.”  And it shows how it is difficult to understand how there can be “lower case gods” of the nations when in reality we honor only one supreme creator, capitial-g God.
    - *Elohim* can and usually does refer to God.  But it’s not a name, it’s not a title, it’s not a set of attributes.  An *elohim* is a being whose rightful and normal mode of existence is in the spiritual realm rather than the physical realm.  That is the common denominator of all the categories of beings who are referred to as *elohim*—YHWH, specific national deities, angels, demons, the deceased dead, and God’s council of holy ones.
- So, let’s go back to that passage in Genesis 3.  Remember what it said in verses 5 and 22?
    - v 5:  **“you will be like God [*elohim*], knowing good and evil”**
    - v 22: **“become like one of us in knowing good and evil”**
    - v. 5 is translated in the ESV as “you will be like God,” but then we have this “like one of us” in v. 22.  What if we translated *both* of those things to refer to the same thing?  To the same group of beings, in fact—to both God *as well as* the lesser created spiritual beings?
- This would mean, of course, that the *elohim*—at least the ones being referenced here—are like God in knowing good and evil.  Combining this with our discussion on Gen 1:26, it would mean, further, that these lesser elohim, like us, hold the image of God.  It doesn’t mean they gave us that image; it merely means that they, too, reflect God.

## Summation of Interpretations

- I have given a lot of information so far.  I’m afraid it might be a bit hard to follow, so I’m going to see what I can do to sum things up and to lay out just a little bit more about our various options of interpretation in Gen 1:26.
- To review, the first and most obvious interpretation to the Christian reader is that God is speaking amongst himself in his triune nature when he says, “Let us make man.”
    - This seems obvious to Christians, but it’s not at all clear that this would have been the way that the ancient person would have understood this passage.  It seems a much more likely option that we are reading this into the text and it seems like a forced option, all things considered.  However, I’m not personally taking the option off the table.  I think the places that we tend to see the Trinity stated this “obviously” (such as Genesis 11 or Isa 6) are actually scenes where God is talking in his assembly.  This is going to connect to what the image of God means and how it can be possible for us to share that image not only with God, but also with his heavenly host.  (Note, that does not have to mean, again, that the heavenly host granted us our image…it merely means we all share it; they had it before we did because they were created before humanity.)
- Another option we haven’t discussed as a possibility for Gen 1:26 is the plural of majesty.
- The plural of majesty is the “royal we” that a ruler or someone of importance might use in English.
    - In English, we do this by pluralizing a pronoun, replacing “I” with “we.”
        - Instead of “I am not amused,” it becomes “*we* are not amused.”  The meaning remains the same.  Multiple people aren’t declaring their state of amusement.
    - The plural of majesty is, I admit, an interesting option considering that royalty can be representative of the people, similar to imaging language, but *clearly* a monarch isn’t representing the people when he or she announces, “We shall have our bath now.”
        - It does make a lot of sense to see “let us make man” as a construct of the plural of majesty.  The problem is….that’s not how Hebrew works.
    - Now, it *does* seem that Hebrew has the plural of majesty, though it is not used in pronouns, but in pluralization of nouns.  This seems to be what is behind the word *elohim*.  Another difference is that the plural of majesty is used in Hebrew to honor someone else rather than being used *by* oneself.  Again, I believe that this is what is happening with the term *elohim* and that is why a plural-looking noun can refer to a singular deity.  An example beyond *elohim* for this can be found in…
    - Proverbs 9:10:  “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom,
    and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.”
    - “Holy One” here is plural —Q*edoshim*
        - But the verse is only talking about the LORD.
    - Another example where we have a plural form used singularly is the term master.  Here is:
    - Genesis 24:9 (ESV)
    9So the servant put his hand under the thigh of Abraham his master and swore to him concerning this matter.
    - The word master there is in the plural construct.
    - Abraham is definitely not a plurality.  He is not more than one lord.  He is being revered or honored.
- So, though Hebrew has this equivalent of the plural of majesty, it does not function the same way as it does in English.  Kings do not speak this way of themselves; rather, others speak this way to kings and masters and gods.
    - There are no examples in the Bible *or* other ANE literature of a verb or a pronoun being used in this way.
    - The plural of majesty in Hebrew is associated with nouns.  Parts of speech matter and do specific things; you can’t just switch things around to provide evidence.  The “Let us make...” language in Genesis is not a noun.  It is a verb.
        - So, as hopeful as this option seemed, we need to reject it as an explanation for this verse.
        - And, by the way, all of this evidence—particularly seeing how the same grammatical structure is applied to Abraham—also pushes against Fruchtenbaum’s suggestion that “*elohim*” opens the door to the Trinity, because if the same grammatical structure can be used in reference to Abraham, then we cannot say that it is uniquely descriptive of God.
- I have one more major theory that needs to be addressed.  I’ve made mention of this, but I need to explain it.  And this is the idea of exhortation—specifically, the plural of exhortation.
    - This is something we use in English.  We use the plural of exhortation when we want to loop other people in on the action.  And…it doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with who is actively doing what.  This matters to our verse in Genesis.
        - A great example of this is, “Let’s go get pizza...”
        - If I say, “let’s go get pizza,” there are many scenarios in which this might play out.
            - When I was a teenager, maybe it was a suggestion to my mom who was trying to figure out what to have for dinner.  I wasn’t going to buy the pizza.  I wasn’t going to drive us to go get the pizza.  I really had nothing to do with the procurement of the pizza aside from making the suggestion and the fact that if my suggestion was taken, my mom would make the effort to get pizza for everyone in the family.  The plural language meant something, it meant that everyone was—hopefully—going to enjoy pizza.  (So long as it wasn’t just pepperoni, anyway.)
    - I know I’ve mentioned this a number of times, but we shouldn’t stop at verse 26 when we are interpreting this….we need to continue to verse 27 where the verb is singular.  So even though God is looping others in…**only** he creates.  No one else.  No one, at all, anywhere, ever, can use this idea to suggest that there are multiple gods creating.  It simply cannot be.  The text is crystal clear that God is the only creator.
        - Let’s see again what Fruchtenbaum says in his commentary, that Gen 1:26
        - could not refer to angels, since God alone did the work of creation.
        
        Arnold G. Fruchtenbaum, Ariel’s Bible Commentary: The Book of Genesis, 1st ed. (San Antonio, TX: Ariel Ministries, 2008), 56.
        - **I agree that God alone did the work of creation.**  A careful reading of the text shows that it does not follow that because God worked alone in creating that he could not be talking to angels.
    - Ultimately I believe it is, in fact, a *simpler* answer that God is speaking to his heavenly host/divine council.  He includes them in verse 26 for a reason we will more deeply explore when we talk about the image of God, but in the end he’s the one who gets things done by himself.
        - Fruchtenbaum is right that the angels are not obviously mentioned in Gen 1.  (I will mention that there is a possibility that they are in day 4 of creation—but this is far from conclusive.)
        - Though it is not in Genesis, there is a hint in Job 38:4-7 where God is speaking…
        - Job 38:4–7 (ESV)
        4“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding.
        5Who determined its measurements—surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it?
        6On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone,
        7when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
        - The morning stars here is paralleled with the sons of God; this is a fairly obvious reference to the heavenly host.  They were there somewhere at the very beginning of creation of the physical realm.
- So, have I convinced you of the heavenly host view?  To me it just makes more sense overall.  It is also an ancient view.  Philo, a contemporary of Jesus and Josephus, takes this view.
- I’m going to read a quote from the *Word Biblical Commentary* on Genesis, written by Gordon Wenham, concerning this issue:
- I do not find the difficulties raised against (a) [*God speaking to his heavenly court*] compelling. It is argued that the OT nowhere else compares man to the angels, nor suggests angelic cooperation in the work of creation. But when angels do appear in the OT they are frequently described as men (e.g., Gen 18:2). And in fact the use of the singular verb “create” in 1:27 does, in fact, suggest that God worked alone in the creation of mankind. “Let us create man” should therefore be regarded as a divine announcement to the heavenly court, drawing the angelic host’s attention to the master stroke of creation, man. As Job 38:4, 7 puts it: “When I laid the foundation of the earth … all the sons of God shouted for joy” (cf. Luke 2:13–14).

*Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 1–15, vol. 1, Word Biblical Commentary (Dallas: Word, Incorporated, 1987), 28.*
- So why the plural language?  Why does it say “let us make…”?
    - God has imagers both in the heavenly realm as well as the earthly realm.  This doesn’t take away from our imaging status.
    - Rather, what we see here is a mirroring of heaven and earth - the creation of humankind somehow involves the heavenly host—that “involvement” is that we relate together in functioning as God’s image.  So please note again, the heavenly host isn’t involved in the act of creation; they aren’t giving us their image.  God is giving us the image, just as he previously granted his image to his heavenly host.
    - This connects to a further occurrence in Genesis—how did the fall happen?
        - All evil is a result of God’s decision to make agents like himself and share his attributes.  One of these attributes is freedom.
        - Chaos enters because a real decision can be made.
        - God ought to do something about that!
            - He could and he does.  He has already worked that out from the beginning.

## Okay, so what?  What’s the big deal?

- I want to make it absolutely, completely, and utterly clear that believing in the divine council or the gods of the nations does not take away from God’s sovereignty or uniqueness.  They, just like us, are created beings.  (And how the heavenly host hooks into the gods of the nations, specifically, rather than just heavenly beings in general will be laid out in a later episode in this series.)
- Even though we’re not getting into the exact details of how the lower gods got to be where they are, to defend this idea, I want to bring out a passage in Isa 43 because this is a passage that makes us English readers think that the gods do not exist.
- Isa 43 is a speech by God.  The end of verse 10 says, “Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me.”
    - In English, this sounds like a plain and obvious denial of the existence of gods other than YHWH.  It says, right there on the page, “no god was formed” either before or after YHWH.  Now, this isn’t saying that YHWH God is created.
    - One thing we need to recall is that during the time of Isaiah, the people of Israel knew about pagan literature.  They knew what pagan literature claimed about other gods in the ANE.  In the worldview of the ANE, gods were created by one another, they were usurped, they all had some degree of power that was often pitted against other gods as they tried to one up each other.
    - What this passage in Isa 43 says is that the way the gods in pagan literature are depicted…that’s bunk.  YHWH was not like those other gods and they were probably lying about their abilities, to boot.
    - Let’s look at that word translated as “god” in Isa 43:10.  That word is “el.”  El was the name of a Canaanite creator deity.  El is also used extensively throughout the Hebrew Bible to refer to YHWH God.  “El” is related to, but not synonymous with, the word “elohim.”  “El” is a subset of the term “elohim.”  All “el” are “elohim,” but not all “elohim” are “el.”
        - Let’s use an analogy in English.  All ostrich are birds, but not all birds are ostrich.  So if you said, “no other ostrich exist,” you’re not saying that “no other birds exist” since ostrich are only one type of bird; they don’t exhaust the category of birds.
        - This is how we cannot use this verse to suggest there are no lower-g gods who were created by God and put in charge of nations.  The lower-g gods, the elohim over the nations, they are NOT creators or saviors or self-existent, etc.
    - Isa 43:10 puts God into a category of himself. “Before me, no ‘el” was formed, nor shall there be any after me.”  What this says is that no High God, no Creator God, no Savior God, no Redeemer God beyond YHWH exists or was created.  YHWH and YHWH alone belongs in that category.  This verse isn’t “against” the idea of other gods; it is against the idea of other Supreme Gods or Gods who could challenge YHWH in some way.
        - How those gods got to be where they are, in charge of the nations, also speaks to YHWH’s sovereignty and is a conversation for the near future.
- My point, though, in this episode, is that God has two families, a spiritual one, and an earthly one.  These two families both participate in God’s image.
- In ANE kingship, the king’s family served as the key members of his court.  God works similarly…he has set up his family to assist him and participate with his rule.  We are all part of God’s heavenly royal court.  No one in the royal court is meant to go against the king, so this is not some kind of royal republic.  There is no danger of God being supplanted by anyone else.  The members of God’s court honor and give glory to him as we reflect his rule throughout the kingdom.  Well, some of us do rebel against him…not effectively, but that doesn’t stop us from trying.
- God’s spiritual family is there to rule with him from the spiritual realm, just as we are here to rule with him from Earth.
    - There is a lot we can unpack about this, but we’ve run out of time for this episode.  Here is something to note concerning the “New Heavens and Earth/New Jerusalem,” though:
    - The “holy ones” in the OT were clearly the heavenly host.
    - The “holy ones” in NT are clearly human believers.
        - Why the transition?  Because we were intended to be the mirror image of the heavenly host, intended to be fit for sacred space from the moment we were created—when things go wrong, God is going to come to us because we can’t go to him.  The Garden is a picture of the way life is supposed to be—it gets ruined, we get kicked out, but eventually humans get the true and complete status of God’s imagers when the Spirit comes to indwell us as we are God’s temple...this begins at the moment of creation, from the beginning—**the redemption of Christ is not an afterthought and not only redemption, but glorification and eventual placement of the believer into the divine council itself.**
        - So you see, this stuff…it’s kind of important.  And I suspect we’ll be discussing it further.  I like talking about things that are important to the life of the believer.

## Outro

- Once again, many thanks for joining me here at Genesis Marks the Spot.  If you haven’t done so, please like, subscribe, rate, and share this as it greatly encourages me and helps others find the podcast.  Also, I’d love to hear from you.  If you’ve got any questions or would like to chat, feel free to email me at genesismarksthespot@gmail.com, visit me on the web at [genesismarksthespot.com](http://genesismarksthespot.com) or at FB at the page or group of that same name.
- Next week we’re going to continue this series about the nature of the supernatural world, digging deeper into what we started here, talking much more about the Trinity.