It is very remarkable that we no sooner open the Bible, than this doctrine is presented to our view. The laws and ordinances established among the Jews were designed to guard that people from idolatry, which in Abraham's time had become very general. On the recollection of this circumstance it appears extraordinary that Moses, when he is describing the creation of the world, should, in order to express his conceptions of the Divine Being, introduce a term which implies _plurality_; and, frequently connecting it with verbs and persons singular, should use that term _thirty_ times in the short account of the creation, when the language afforded other words in the singular number that would have answered his purpose equally well; nay, if he did not wish to express a _plurality_, that grammatical accuracy should have led him to adopt. When he made use of a plural noun for the name of God, which he has done, perhaps, _five hundred_ times more in one form or other in the five books of his writings, this _plurality_, I apprehend, was the idea he meant to convey to mankind. He, or rather the HOLY SPIRIT, by whom he was inspired to write his history, meant to give some hints and intimations of a doctrine more clearly to be revealed in future ages.[6]
The ancient Jews understood _Elohim_ as conveying the idea of a plurality in the Godhead. "Come," says one of them, "and see the mystery of the word _Elohim_: there are _three degrees_, and each degree by itself _alone_, and yet notwithstanding they are all _one_, and joined together in one, and are not _divided_ from each other."[7]
R. Bechai, a celebrated author among the Jews, discoursing of the word _Elohim_, and of the import and signification of it, adds these words:--"According to the cabalistical way, this name _Elohim_ is two words, namely, _El him_, that is, _they are God_. But the explanation of the Yod is to be fetched from Eccles. xii, 1, _Remember thy_ CREATORS. He that is prudent will understand it." These words do sufficiently prove the Cabala among the Jews, says Bishop Kidder, that though the Divine Nature was but _one_, yet there was some kind of _plurality_ in this Divine Nature; and this is fairly insinuated in the _Bara Elohim_, which we find in the beginning of Genesis.[8]