The notion of a divine counsel can of course draw one’s mind back
to the narratives of man’s creation and eventual expulsion from Eden, in
particular to the unexpected use of the plural in both loci: “Then God said, ‘Let us
make man in our
image and in our likeness’ ” (Gen 1:26) and “the Lord God said, ‘Behold! The man
has become like one from among us ( ,(כאחד ממנו knowing good and evil’ ” (Gen 3:22). It
is certainly tempting to suggest that the consonantal text provides an
alternative account of the First Man narrative in which the figure is indeed a
‘divine-being’ ( אלהים ).
This need not be seen as a radical departure from the narrative as told in
Genesis, not only because the use of the first-person plural there might imply
such a reading, but also because there are a number of examples in the Hebrew Bible
where mortal men are said to be ‘divine-beings’ ( אלהים ), famously Moses’ commission: “See I
have made you a god to Pharaoh, and Aaron your brother will be your prophet” ( ראה נתתיך אלהים לפרעה Exod 7:1; cf. Ps
45:7; Zech 12:8), without this implying equivalence to Yahweh. (Hector M. Patmore, Adam, Satan, and
the King of Tyre: The Interpretation of Ezekiel 28:11-19 in Late Antiquity [Jewish
and Christian Perspectives 20; Leiden: Brill, 2012], 283)
