Bible word study

Elohim (Strong’s H430): Meaning in the Bible

Elohim (אֱלֹהִים) is the Hebrew word numbered H430 in Strong’s concordance of the Bible. Strong’s defines it as gods in the ordinary sense; but specifically used (in the plural thus, especially with the article) of the supreme God; occasionally applied by way of deference to magistrates; and sometimes as a superlative. In the King James Bible it is translated angels, God (gods) (-dess, -ly), judges.

• Original wordאֱלֹהִים
• Transliterationʼĕlôhîym
• Pronunciationel-o-heem'
• Part of speechnoun (masculine) (n-m)
• Strong’s numberH430
• LanguageHebrew

The full Strong’s definition

Derivation. plural of H433;

How the King James Bible translates it

Where Elohim appears in the Bible

In the King James Bible’s text tagged with Strong’s numbers, Elohim (H430) stands behind 2,604 English renderings in 2,248 verses across 35 of the 66 books. It is most frequent in Deuteronomy (374), Psalms (364), Genesis (218).

How the King James Bible renders Elohim, by count

• god2,367 of 2,604 (91 percent)
• gods223 of 2,604 (9 percent)
• judges4 of 2,604 (0 percent)
• goddess2 of 2,604 (0 percent)
• great2 of 2,604 (0 percent)
• mighty2 of 2,604 (0 percent)

Three places to read Elohim

• Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
• Judges 2:12 And they forsook the LORD God of their fathers, which brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods, of the gods of the people that were round about them, and bowed themselves unto them, and provoked the LORD to anger.
• Nehemiah 13:27 Shall we then hearken unto you to do all this great evil, to transgress against our God in marrying strange wives?

Counts are made at build time from the King James text tagged with Strong’s numbers (eBible.org, public domain). Verses are read from the stored King James text, never typed.

Why the word matters

Every word the biblical writers chose carries weight. Studying Elohim in the original Hebrew lets you read the passages where it appears more carefully, closer to what the first hearers understood, so the meaning is drawn from the text itself rather than from the English alone.

The lexical data on this page comes from the public-domain Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890), a Hebrew and Greek dictionary keyed to the King James Bible. It is a reference tool, not a settled verdict: no single word decides a doctrine, and meaning is finally shaped by how a word is used in its sentences. Read the passages themselves, prayerfully, and in full.

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