On Gen 1:26:
The easiest solution
to these forms of address is to place them in the context of the biblical
picture of God’s rule in heaven, where he is accompanied by his divine
entourage, the lesser divine beings (see the “Sons of God” in Gen 6:1-4).
According to Job 38:7, this divine entourage was present at creation, “when the
morning stars sang together, and the Sons of God shouted for joy.” The divine
assembly is familiar from prophetic visions, such as that of Micaiah: “I saw
Yahweh seated on his throne and all the hosts of heaven standing before him on
his right and his left” (1 Kgs 22:19). Similarly, Daniel sees God enthroned and
served by a myriad of angels, and then “the court sat and the books opened”
(Dan 7:9-10). As noted above, Isaiah sees Yahweh enthroned and accompanied by
seraphim, after which he overhears Yahweh’s deliberations, “Whom shall I send,
and who will go for us?” (Isa 6:1-8). In this context, Yahweh is referring both
to himself (“I”) and to the divine assembly (“us”).
Against this
backdrop, the “us” in God’s speeches in Genesis 1-11 is best understood as
referring to the divine assembly . . . (Ronald Hendel, Genesis 1-11: A New
Translation with Introduction and Commentary [AYB 1A; New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2024], 129)
The twin qualities of
divine knowledge and immortality (that is, the fruits of the two trees) are the
hallmarks of the gods in ancient Near Eastern religions. In the Mesopotamian
epics of Gilgamesh and Adapa, the heroes discover that they are doomed to human
existence because, though they possess great knowledge, they cannot attain
immortality. In both cases, immortality (or perpetual rejuvenation) is imparted
by food by which the hero momentarily has access: for Adapa the “food of life”
and the “water of life,” and for Gilgamesh the “plant of heartbeat.” These
stories are thematically related to the Garden of Eden story . . . Similarly,
in Israel immortality is a divine quality. In Psalm 82, when God condemns the
other gods to death because of their injustice, he states, “Therefore, like
humans you will die, / and like the princes you will fall” (Ps 82:7). In this
unique instance in the Bible where gods die, they are compared to humans in
their mortality. This becoming “like humans” is the inverse of the human
becoming “like gods” in the Garden of Eden. (Ronald Hendel, Genesis 1-11: A
New Translation with Introduction and Commentary [AYB 1A; New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2024], 165)
On Gen 3:5:
The plural
translation kəʾlōhîm, “like gods,” rather than the singular “like God,”
is preferable because of both the plural participle that follows, yōdə’ê,
“knowers of,” and Yahweh’s later affirmation, “the human has become like one of
us, knowing good and evil” (3:22). The plural of “gods” and “one of us”
presumably refers to Yahweh and the lesser deities that accompany him, although
the other gods play no active role in the story . . . (Ronald Hendel, Genesis
1-11: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary [AYB 1A; New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2024], 181)
On Gen 3:22:
The “us” of this
statement as well as the particle of attention, hên (“behold, look”),
indicates that Yahweh is addressing a plural audience. As commentators have
long noted, this utterance is best explained as an address to Yahwe’s divine
entourage (e.g., Ibn Ezra; Miller 1978: 20-22). These are group of lesser
deities that accompany or wait upon God in various biblical passages, for
example, “Seraphs stood in attendance on him” (Isa 6:2), or “all the host of
heaven were standing by him” (1 Kgs 22:19; see Mullen 1980). This plural
address is also found in Gen 1:26 (“Let us make . . .”) and 11:7 (“Let us go
down and confuse . . .”). These attendant beings are not mentioned earlier, as
when Yahweh walks about the garden (3:8), but the standing of the cherubim to
guard the garden (3:24) belongs to this notion of the divine assembly, which
has various strata, including Sons of God (6:1-2) and angels (18-19). IN this
scene in Eden, Yahweh deliberates in the plural, addressing his divine
attendants, and announces the verdict that the humans must be expelled, lest
they go from being “like gods” to becoming gods. The plural reference to “us”
serves to emphasize the bounded category of divinity as well as the divide
between humans and divine beings, which must not be effaced. (Ronald Hendel, Genesis
1-11: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary [AYB 1A; New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2024], 193)
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