Commenting on Gen 20:13, Robert Alter writes:
Here is another instance in which the translators’ command of Hebrew should have enabled them to know better, but a reticence about recognizing the boldness of the original led them astray. The most common word for “God” in the Hebrew, ‘elohim, famously has a plural ending but is treated grammatically as a singular, whether because it is a linguistical fossil harking back to a period when everyone spoke of “the gods” or because it is something like a plural of majesty (if in fact that actually existed in biblical Hebrew). All biblical scholars are aware that when the noun is treated grammatically as a plural it refers to “the gods,” as in Aaron’s words about the golden calf. “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt” (Exodus 32:4). But when Abraham tells Abimelech how he became a wanderer (Genesis 20:13), all the English versions have “God” impose this fate on him despite the fact that here ‘elohim is unambiguously the subject of a plural verb, so that it must be rendered, “When the gods made me a wanderer from my father’s house.” This is a small but vivid instance of the liveliness of the dialogue in the Bible, a topic we shall take up in another chapter. Abraham is speaking with a polytheist, and he wants to address him in language entirely accessible to his interlocutor. In fact, his choice of words might well reflect an ancient “manner of speaking”—the gods, ‘elohim, which is to say, circumstances, fate, my destiny, made me wander from my father’s house. (Robert Alter, The Art of Bible Translation [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019], 50-51)
For more on Gen 20:13, see:
