Elohim (pronounced “El oh heem”) is the third word in the Hebrew Bible and is used (or a form of it) over 2600 times to refer to either the true living God or false gods. One of the oddest things about the word Elohim is that it is a plural word. It might seem like an odd choice for Moses to use throughout Genesis to introduce his people to the one true God. It seems especially unusual when he literally writes “Yahweh(The self existent one) our Elohim(gods) is one Yahweh (self existent one)”. There is definitely something unusual about this.

When we add Genesis 1:26 into the mix it gets stranger, but becomes clearer at the same time. “Then God (Elohim, the gods) said, ‘Let us (notice this is plural) make man in our (notice this is plural)  image, after our (notice this is plural)  likeness...’” So we have one Lord (singular) who somehow is also Gods (plural). If we explored some other scriptures we would find the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are all self existent (Yahweh) and God/Gods (Elohim). How can three be one? Our human minds may never fully understand. It seems like every analogy we try to use falls toward some false belief. We have a tendency to either try to make Father, Son and Spirit three separate Gods, or we try to fuse them together so that they are three different parts of a single God, or we might even go to the point of just three different manifestations of one God. None of these directions is what the Bible teaches. 

Elohim is applied to the three combined and also applies to each one as well. Even though it is Greek and not Hebrew John perhaps explains it best when he says the word (Jesus, the son) was with God and he also was God. You have God with God being God. Jesus certainly recognizes the distinction between him and the Father and the Spirit, but he also says I and my Father are one. Each is distinct and yet still one. It is mind-boggling, but one thing we can be sure of is that Christ is also Elohim.

In the Old Testament the first person who was anointed was Aaron, the High Priest, and then his sons were anointed as priests (Exodus 28:41). The practice of using a special oil to anoint people as a sign that they were set apart by God for a certain purpose began with the first priests under the Law of Moses, but the idea of anointing reached all the way back to Jacob at Bethel when he poured oil on a rock and renamed the place “House of God” in Genesis 28:18-19. 

​The priests were not the only people to be anointed and Jacob’s pillow rock was not the only thing anointed. In fact anointing is mentioned over 150 times in the Bible, though not always with oil and not always for the purpose of consecration to God. Judges 9 first mentions the idea of a king being anointed during the telling of an allegorical story, and in 1 Samuel 2 Hannah sings a song of prophecy looking forward to a time when the Lord would have a king as His anointed one. Later her son anoints the first king over Israel, Saul, in 1 Samuel 10:1. 

In 1 Kings 19:15-16 we read of the third category of person who was anointed. Elijah was to anoint Elisha to take his place as a prophet of God. Not every prophet was God’s anointed messenger, and not every priest or king was anointed with God’s approval, but those He anointed were special. None were as special; however, as His own Son whom He anointed prophet and priest and king. He certainly had good news to proclaim. Luke 4:18-19  “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed,  19  to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.”

The only question for us is: Have I made God’s anointed my prophet and priest and king?

JP