What Does “Elohim” Mean?

The very first thing the Bible tells you about God is a name — Elohim. And that name carries a small grammatical mystery with a large meaning.

Elohim (אֱלֹהִים) is the first name for God in the Bible: “In the beginning, Elohim created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). It means God — the mighty, sovereign Creator. Its root is El (אל), “mighty one, strength, power.” Read as Paleo-Hebrew pictures, El is the ox (strength) and the staff — “the strong leader.”

Why is it plural?

Here is the mystery: Elohim is grammatically plural (the “-im” ending), yet Genesis pairs it with a singular verb — “Elohim created” (bara, singular). The Bible is not describing many gods. It is describing the one God in a form of fullness and majesty — what scholars often call a “plural of majesty.” The one God is greater than the singular can contain.

Ancient readers also heard in it a hint of God's fullness that the rest of Scripture would unfold — the same God who says, “Let us make man in our image” (Genesis 1:26). Christians have long seen the seed of the triune God — one God in the fullness of His being — quietly present in that first name.

El, the strong one, all through the Bible

The root El is everywhere. It closes the names of the mighty: Isra-el (“he struggles with God”), Beth-el (“house of God”), Immanu-el (“God with us”), Micha-el (“who is like God?”). Every one of those names ends by naming the strong God, El.

The first word about God in Scripture is not an argument. It is a name too full for the singular to hold.

The God who is more than enough

To meet God first as Elohim is to meet Him as the overflowing, all-sufficient Creator — the One whose power called light out of darkness and whose fullness no single word can carry. See how Elohim stands among God's other names in The Names of God in Hebrew.