Click to join the conversation with over 500,000 Pentecostal believers and scholars
| PentecostalTheology.com
Should the word elohim in Psalm 8:5 be translated into gods/angels/or god? The NIV translates it this way:
You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them
with glory and honor.
Another translation, the New Living Translation, has:
Yet you made them only a little lower than God and crowned them with
glory and honor
The Hebrew is me’elohim (מֵאֱלֹהִים).
Usually elohim followed by singular words is translated into “god”, while elohim followed by plural words is translated by “gods”.
Some translators translate it here as “angels”. Some translate it as “God”. None translates it as “gods”.
Is this justified?
It looks like some translations have no problem seeing elohim as plural but downgrade the being(s) into “angels”. The other see elohim to mean “god”, but keep it singular despite the plural word.