Who Is Elohim?

I. Elohim Is a Plural Word

The very first name for God in the Bible is Elohim [Genesis 1:1]. In Hebrew grammar, the suffix –im is a masculine plural ending — as in cherubim, seraphim, or Urim. Elohim is not a singular name. It is a plural noun that the translators have domesticated into the English singular "God" because the doctrine it carries was too much for Christendom to absorb. Joseph Smith refused the domestication.

“The word Elohim ought to be in the plural all the way through — Gods. The heads of the Gods appointed one God for us; and when you take that view of the subject, it sets one free to see all the beauty, holiness, and perfection of the Gods.”

The plural form is not an accident of Hebrew poetry and it is not a "plural of majesty" — Hebrew scholars who argue that are papering over the plainest reading of the text. When the Gods themselves speak in Genesis, they speak as a council: "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness" [Genesis 1:26]. The "us" and "our" are not rhetorical. They name the assembly.

II. The Book of Abraham Names the Council

The Book of Abraham strips every ambiguity from the text of Genesis. Abraham sees the creation from the inside:

“And then the Lord said: Let us go down. And they went down at the beginning, and they, that is the Gods, organized and formed the heavens and the earth.”

The Gods organize — they do not manufacture out of nothing. The Hebrew verb bara does not mean ex nihilo creation; it means to fashion, to cut, to organize [Abraham 3:22–24]. The cosmos is not spoken into being out of absolute emptiness. Intelligences, light, matter, and order already exist; the Gods organize them into a habitable world.

Abraham 3 then shows the council of the noble and great ones — the intelligences organized before the world was — with the Lord standing in their midst saying, "These I will make my rulers" [Abraham 3:23]. The council is real. It has members. It has a head. It has an order.

III. Deuteronomy 32 and Psalm 82 — The Sons of God and the Divided Nations

Two Old Testament passages open the divine council directly. Deuteronomy 32:8–9 in the oldest Hebrew manuscripts (preserved in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Septuagint) reads:

“When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the sons of God. For the Lord’s portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance.”

El Elyon — the Most High — divides the nations among the sons of God (bene elohim). Each nation receives a divine steward. And Jehovah receives one portion specifically: Jacob / Israel. Read this plainly: El Elyon is the apex; Jehovah is assigned Israel as His inheritance by El Elyon. The Father-of-the-Father structure is written into the Law of Moses itself.

Psalm 82 reinforces the scene. El Elyon stands in the divine council and judges the elohim — the lesser gods appointed over the nations — for their corruption.

“I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the Most High. But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes.”

Jesus Himself quotes this passage to defend His own divine sonship [John 10:34–36], treating the Psalm as settled scripture about the existence of the council. The council is not a Canaanite contamination in the text — it is the native theology of the Bible.

IV. El Elyon, Ahman, and the Father of the Father

Elohim is not a proper name so much as a class and a council. When the Restoration distinguishes "Heavenly Father" from Jehovah, the figure it names is the head of the council: El Elyon — God Most High. Joseph Smith called Him Ahman [D&C 78:20; D&C 95:17], the man of holiness who is the Father of the Only Begotten [Moses 6:57]. He is the Father of Jehovah.

The ancient framework — preserved in Melchisedec, Enoch, and Abraham — is that divinity is hierarchical and familial. There is a Father above the Father. There is a Son of the Son. The council of the Gods is not a flat democracy of equals; it is a patriarchal order in which the Most High presides, and each God beneath Him governs a portion of creation by delegated authority.

V. Implications for Worship and Prayer

The Latter-day Saint tradition since 1916 has mapped Elohim’s name onto "Heavenly Father" as the universal addressee of prayer. This is not wrong in principle — prayer ascends through the patriarchal order — but the scripture’s own pattern is more specific. The Son prays to the Father; the saints pray to the Father in the name of the Son [3 Nephi 18:19]. In this dispensation the Son is Jehovah, and the Father to whom He prays is El Elyon.

And yet the Book of Mormon is unembarrassed to say Jehovah Himself is the Eternal Father — the very Father of heaven and earth [Mosiah 3:8; Mosiah 16:15; 2 Nephi 26:12]. This is not a contradiction. Jehovah is Father to us by covenant and by creation of this world. El Elyon is Father to Jehovah by eternal generation. The family keeps extending upward. That is the doctrine.