There is not one single text were God refers to himself in the plural.
No?
Plurality in the Old Testament
An Examination of God’s Uniplurality in light the Hebrew Bible’s Use of Plurals
Sam Shamoun
In several articles and rebuttals we have presented evidence which we feel conclusively shows that the Hebrew Bible presents a Triune Godhead, that there are three (and only three) distinct Persons identified as Yahweh God. The Hebrew Scriptures refer to Yahweh, Yahweh’s Angel, and Yahweh’s Spirit as distinct Persons, all of whom are fully God. To read the data that establishes this position please consult the following (1, 2, 3, 4, 5).
In this article we want to focus our attention on the Bible’s use of plural nouns, verbs, adjectives etc., to see how they lend further support for our premise that the God revealed in the OT is a multi-Personal Being.
Our examination of the use of plurals is not intended to stand on its own, that these plurals by themselves are sufficient enough to prove that God is a multi-Personal Being. Instead, the biblical use of plurals is intended to supplement the evidence already presented which conclusively demonstrates that the God revealed in both the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Scriptures is tri-Personal.
Basically, the existence of such plurals is actually what we would expect to find if the Bible does present a Triune God. In other words, if our arguments regarding there being more than one Divine Person existing as God are exegetically sound, then it should not come as a surprise to find the Holy Bible speaking of God in the plural, i.e. we would expect to find plural nouns, verbs, adjectives being used for God to denote the fact that he is a multi-Personal Being.
Someone may interject and claim that these plurals would actually prove that there are multiple Gods, not multiple Persons of God. This would be a valid objection had it not been for the fact that the Bible clearly and emphatically teaches that there is only one God (cf. Deuteronomy 32:39; Isaiah 37:16, 20; 46:9-11; Mark 12:29-32; John 5:44, 17:3; Romans 3:30; Galatians 3:20, 4:8; 1 Thessalonians 1:9; 1 Timothy 2:5; James 2:19). What this suggests is that the Bible writers used plurals, not because they intended to convey the notion that there is more than one God, but because they were trying to communicate the truth that God exists as multiple Persons. They communicated this divinely revealed truth by expressing it in the thought patterns and categories of the Hebrew language.
In the biblical world of the Hebrews they didn’t use terms such as persons and beings as distinct categories whereby they could communicate the fact of God existing as one Being in three different Persons. They would therefore need to relay this truth in a manner appropriate to the Hebrew mindset and language, and one way to do that would be to refer to God by using both by singular and plural nouns, verbs etc.
The first kind of plurals we will look at is that of nouns, since there are many places in the Holy Bible where plural nouns are used for Yahweh God. We start off by analyzing the heart of Jewish and Christian monotheism known as the Shema, found in Deuteronomy 6:4. Here is the Hebrew transliteration of this OT monotheistic creedal confession:
Shema Yisrael Yahweh Eloheinu Yahweh Echad
A literal translation of the above would be:
"Hear, O Israel; Yahweh [is] our Gods, Yahweh is a Unity."
The Hebrew word Eloheinu, which we translated as "our Gods," is the 1st person plural declension of Elohim. Elohim, as most people know, is a plural noun which is regularly translated as God when referring to the one and only God, Yahweh. One Reformed Jewish source made the following interesting claim regarding this specific word:
Eloheinu is the first-person plural possessive form of the Hebrew noun Elohim, which is translated "God" but literally means "our God." Yet strangely, this plural noun is virtually always translated as a singular. Our mystics understood this to be the One manifesting as the many. (Lev Sham Tov, "Life At Its Highest" by Ted Falcon as seen in Reform Jewish Magazine; source; bold and underline emphasis ours)
The word that we rendered as Unity is Echad. Echad functions precisely like our English word one, and can refer to either a solitary unity or to a compound one. Places where Echad is used as a uni-plural, a compound unity, include:
"Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh (basar echad)." Genesis 2:24
Two distinct persons of flesh come together to form a unity.
"Then we will give our daughters to you, and we will take your daughters to ourselves, and we will dwell with you and become one people (‘am echad)… Only on this condition will the men agree to dwell with us to become one people (‘am echad)--when every male among us is circumcised as they are circumcised." Genesis 34:16, 22
Two groups of people, the Israelites and the Shechemites, come together to form one people.
"Then Joseph said to Pharaoh, ‘The dreams of Pharaoh are one (echad); God has revealed to Pharaoh what he is about to do. The seven good cows are seven years, and the seven good ears are seven years; the dreams are one (echad).’" Genesis 41:25-26
Pharaoh’s dreams are one, a unity.
It may be worth noting that a medieval Jewish Rabbi and Scholar named Moses Maimonides substituted the word echad for yachid (a word which can mean unique, solitary, only one etc.) when articulating the Jewish position regarding God’s unity. However, this very change, or the fact that Maimonides felt the need to insert yachid in the place of echad, betrays the fact that the Christians had a strong argument based on the original form. Maimonides seemed to be aware that echad could function as a uniplural, suggesting a plurality-within-unity, and chose another word that he thought would more strongly emphasize that God is a singularity or a solitary existence. Messianic Scholar Dr. Michael Brown writes:
"Actually, ’echad simply means ‘one,’ exactly like our English word ‘one.’ While it can refer to compound unity (just as our English word can, as in one team, one couple, etc.), it does not specifically refer to compound unity. On the other hand, ‘echad certainly does not refer to the concept of absolute unity, an idea expressed most clearly in the twelfth century by Moses Maimonides, who asserted that the Jewish people must believe that God is yachid, an ‘only’ one. There is no doubt that this reaction was due to exaggerated, unbiblical, ‘Christian’ beliefs that gave Jews the impression Christians worshiped three gods. Unfortunately, the view of Maimonides is reactionary and also goes beyond what is stated in the Scriptures. In fact, there is not a single verse anywhere in the Bible that clearly or directly states that God is an absolute unity." (Brown, Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus: Theological Objections [Baker Books, Grand Rapids MI, 2000], Volume Two, p. 4)
Wrong here
J.
