Table of Contents
Some readers apply the titles Eloah and Elohim to people who carry divine power, and hold that the Bible promises the faithful a share in the divine nature. They read a set of verses this way.
Scriptural Illustrations
Isaiah 45:14 shows nations acknowledging divine power at work through people God has chosen. In the verse, the people of Egypt, Ethiopia and the Sabeans come in chains and say, “Surely God is in thee; and there is none else, there is no God” (Isaiah 45:14, KJV). The Hebrew word for God in the first clause is El.
The judges called gods
I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High.
Psalm 82:6, KJV
The word for “gods” here is elohim; see also Beni Elohim. Some readers also point to Paul, who writes of access “into this grace wherein we stand,” with “hope of the glory of God” (Romans 5:2, KJV), and of believers as “heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ” (Romans 8:17, KJV). First John says “now are we the sons of God” and “when he shall appear, we shall be like him” (1 John 3:2, KJV). In John 17 Jesus prays for those given to him: “the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one” (John 17:22, KJV).
Partakers of the divine nature
Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.
2 Peter 1:4, KJV
Eloah in the Hebrew Bible
Eloah (אֱלוֹהַּ, Strong’s 433) is the singular form beside the plural Elohim. The Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon calls it “probably a singular formed by inference from plural” Elohim, and counts it 57 times, 41 of them in Job. It appears in the ancient poems of Deuteronomy 32 and Psalm 18, and later as an archaism in poetry such as Job and Habakkuk.
Jeshurun forsakes Eloah
But Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked: thou art waxen fat, thou art grown thick, thou art covered with fatness; then he forsook God which made him, and lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation.
Deuteronomy 32:15, KJV
Here Eloah names God as the maker of Israel. Job, mocked by his neighbours, is one “who calleth upon God, and he answereth him” (Job 12:4, KJV). Eliphaz promises Job that he “shalt lift up thy face unto God” (Job 22:26, KJV). Psalm 18 asks “For who is God save the LORD?” (Psalm 18:31, KJV; 18:32 in the Hebrew numbering). Habakkuk describes a theophany: “God came from Teman, and the Holy One from mount Paran” (Habakkuk 3:3, KJV). In each of these verses the Hebrew word for God is Eloah.
The Hawaiian word “Aloha”
Aloha is the Hawaiian word for love, affection, peace, compassion and mercy. Lorrin Andrews and Henry Parker’s Dictionary of the Hawaiian Language (1922) defines it as “A word expressing different feelings: love, affection, gratitude, kindness, pity, compassion, grief, the modern common salutation at meeting; parting.” The word comes from the Proto-Polynesian greeting *qarofa.
A common folk etymology says the word “Aloha” comes from alo (presence, or face) and hā (breath), so that it means “the presence of breath.” Some tie this to the breath of life in Genesis, where God “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul” (Genesis 2:7, KJV).
Hawaii’s law of the Aloha Spirit spells the word out as five values: akahai (kindness), lōkahi (unity), ʻoluʻolu (agreeableness), haʻahaʻa (humility) and ahonui (patience).
Eloah and the Breath of Life
Some readers hold that in Hebrew theology Eloah or Elohim refers to God as the Creator, whose breath brings life, and that God’s Spirit (ruach) is tied to breath. They cite Job 33:4, where the Hebrew words are El and Shaddai.
The breath of the Almighty
The spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty hath given me life.
Job 33:4, KJV
See also El Shaddai and Hawaiian accounts of creation.
