In the following blog posts, I discussed Gen 20:13, a verse which couples elohim with plural verbs, indicating plural gods, as well as the lame “responses” offered by Evangelicals:
Another relevant verse is Gen 35:7:
And there he [Jacob] built an altar and called the place El-bethel, because it was there that God had revealed himself to him when he fled from his brother. (NRSV)
In the Hebrew, the verb “to reveal” (גלה) is in the third person plural (נִגְל֤וּ), indicating that הָֽאֱלֹהִ֔ים (the elohim) means “the gods,” that is, a plurality of gods who, according to the author of Genesis, have ontological existence (false idols and the like are not in view here). As one commentator noted:
there the gods had revealed themselves to him] The pl. vb. together with the use of the art. suggests that the sentence preserves a more polytheistic version of the Bethel-legend than 28:12,—one in which the ‘angels of God’ were spoken of as simply אֱלֹהִים (John Skinner, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Genesis [New York: Scribner, 1910], 424.)
As with many other passages in the Bible, Gen 35:7 not only blows many “mainstream” theologies out of the exegetical water but also soundly supports Latter-day Saint theology.
