Nouns: Gender and Number

English nouns have no gender. We say he of a man and she of a woman, and it of almost everything else, but table and truth are not masculine or feminine words. Hebrew is different. Every Hebrew noun is either masculine or feminine, and the words around it, adjectives, verbs and pronouns, change their form to agree with it. There is no neuter. A stone, a law and a city each have a gender, and a reader who knows the gender of a noun can often see at a glance which verb or adjective belongs to it.

The commonest marks of a feminine noun are the endings ָה, -ah, and ֶת or ַת, -et or -at. In Genesis 1:27, quoted here from the Westminster Leningrad Codex (WLC), the standard printed Hebrew text, male and female is זָכָר וּנְקֵבָה (zakhar uneqevah): the first word has no ending and is masculine, the second ends in -ah and is feminine. The word ending וּת, -ut, also makes feminine nouns, as in the anchor verse's דְּמוּת (demut, likeness). The free tools will tell you the gender of every noun. STEP Bible spells it out in words when you tap a word; Blue Letter Bible gives it in the parsing line. Module 2 showed you where to find both on a phone.

The endings are habits, not laws. Many feminine nouns have no ending at all: אֶרֶץ (erets, earth or land) is usually feminine, and so are עִיר (ir, city) and most names of body parts that come in pairs. Some tools label a noun like erets common or both, because a handful of its uses are masculine. So when gender matters for a reading, check the parsing rather than guessing from the ending.

The most important thing to grasp about Hebrew gender is what it does not mean. Grammatical gender is a way of sorting words, not a statement about the thing named. The Hebrew word for spirit or wind, רוּחַ (ruach), is usually feminine. In Genesis 1:2 the Spirit of God is hovering, and the participle hovering has a feminine ending to agree with ruach. From this some popular teachers have drawn the claim that the Holy Spirit is the feminine side of God. That is a word-study trap of exactly the kind Module 2 warned about. The same noun is sometimes treated as masculine, as in Numbers 11:31, where the verb for a wind went out is masculine; the Greek word for spirit in the New Testament is neuter; the Latin is masculine. If grammatical gender decided the nature of the Spirit, the Spirit would be female in Hebrew, neuter in Greek and male in Latin. Gender tells you which words belong together in a sentence. It does not tell you what God is like.

Hebrew nouns also have number, and here there are three possibilities, not two. A noun can be singular, plural or dual. The usual masculine plural ending is ִים, -im, as in the anchor verse's הַשָּׁמַיִם (hashamayim, the heavens or the air) and in the cherubim and seraphim English readers already know. The usual feminine plural ending is וֹת, -ot. Again these are habits: אָבוֹת (avot, fathers) is masculine with an -ot ending, and נָשִׁים (nashim, women) is feminine with an -im ending. The tool's parsing settles it.

The dual, ַיִם, -ayim, is used mostly for things that come in pairs. Eyes are עֵינַיִם (enayim), as in Genesis 3:6, where the tree was pleasing to the eyes; ears are אָזְנַיִם (oznayim); in Isaiah 6:2 the seraphim have six כְּנָפַיִם (kenafayim, wings), and cover their feet with two of them; in Isaiah 6:5 the prophet is a man of unclean שְׂפָתַיִם (sefatayim, lips). It is also used for a few measures of two, such as יוֹמַיִם (yomayim, two days) in Exodus 21:21. Blue Letter Bible and STEP mark these forms dual, which is your cue that the word names a pair.

Watch for words that only look dual. שָׁמַיִם (shamayim, heavens) and מַיִם (mayim, water) end in -ayim, yet the tools parse them as plural, and grammarians argue about how the ending arose. Neither word means two of anything. Nor does the place name מִצְרַיִם (Mitsrayim, Egypt). Do not preach the two heavens or the two waters from an ending.

Most important for reading the Bible, grammatical number and real number do not always match. Some Hebrew nouns are plural in form and singular in sense. Face is always plural, פָּנִים (panim). Life is plural, חַיִּים (chayyim), so the tree of life in Genesis 3:22 is, word for word, the tree of the lives, and no translator renders it so. Grammarians call this a plural of extension or abstraction: the plural marks something large, many-sided or abstract, not a count. Going the other way, some nouns are singular in form and plural in sense. The anchor verse shows one. אָדָם (adam, man or humankind) is singular, but the verb that follows, וְיִרְדּוּ (veyirdu, and let them rule), is plural, and verse 27 says that God created him and then that he created them. Hebrew calls one noun a whole race and then speaks of the race as many.

Keep this in mind for the rest of the lesson. When a tool prints plural beside a word, it is reporting the form. Whether the word means more than one thing is a second question, and context answers it.

The commonest word for God in the Old Testament, used more than 2,500 times, is אֱלֹהִים (elohim). It has the masculine plural ending -im, and every tool will parse it as masculine plural. That much is not in doubt. What needs explaining is the company it keeps.

When elohim means the God of Israel, the words that agree with it are almost always singular. Genesis 1:1 says בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים (bara elohim, God created), and bara is third person masculine singular, he created. The anchor verse opens וַיֹּאמֶר אֱלֹהִים (vayyomer elohim, and God said), again he said, not they said. Adjectives agree the same way: Psalm 7:9 calls him 'O righteous God', and in the Hebrew the adjective righteous is singular; 2 Kings 19:4 speaks of 'the living God' with a singular adjective. A Hebrew reader met a plural noun with singular grammar on almost every page and heard one God.

Yet the same word is an ordinary plural when it means gods. In Exodus 20:3, 'You shall have no other gods before Me', elohim takes the plural adjective אֲחֵרִים (acherim, other). It can mean a single foreign god: in Judges 11:24 Jephthah speaks of 'your god Chemosh', and in 1 Samuel 5:7 the Philistines of 'our god Dagon', both with the same plural form. It can mean heavenly beings: Psalm 8:5 says 'You made him a little lower than the angels', where the Hebrew word behind angels is elohim, and Hebrews 2:7 quotes it that way from the Greek Old Testament. And Psalm 82:1 uses it twice in one line: 'God presides in the divine assembly; He renders judgment among the gods'. The noun alone never tells you which is meant. The grammar around it and the context tell you.

The golden calf shows this most clearly. In Exodus 32:4 the people say, 'These, O Israel, are your gods, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!' The verb הֶעֱלוּךָ (he'elukha, they brought you up) is plural, and so is the pronoun these. When Nehemiah 9:18 retells the scene it has 'This is your God who brought you up out of Egypt', with a singular pronoun and a singular verb, הֶעֶלְךָ (he'elkha, he brought you up). Same noun, same event; the agreement changed and the translation changed with it.

Now the exceptions, which are few and which matter. A handful of times elohim meaning the true God takes a plural verb. In Genesis 20:13 Abraham says, in the BSB, 'God had me journey from my father's house', and the verb is plural. In Genesis 35:7 the verb rendered 'God had revealed Himself' is plural. In 2 Samuel 7:23 the verb rendered 'God went out' is plural, while 1 Chronicles 17:21, telling the same prayer, has a singular verb. There are plural adjectives too: Deuteronomy 5:26 has 'the living God' with a plural adjective, and Joshua 24:19 says 'He is a holy God' with holy in the plural and He in the singular. And some titles of God are plural in form: in Ecclesiastes 12:1, 'Remember your Creator', the word Creator is a plural participle; in Isaiah 54:5, 'your husband is your Maker', husband and Maker are both plural participles. Here is what is settled: the form is plural; the God of Israel is one, as Deuteronomy 6:4 and Isaiah 44:24, 'who alone stretched out the heavens', insist; and the normal grammar is singular. What those facts mean together is where the readings divide.

The first reading is that elohim is a plural of majesty, sometimes called a plural of excellence or an honorific plural. Its case runs like this. Hebrew uses plural forms for a single person of rank elsewhere, where no one suspects a plurality. In Genesis 42:30 Joseph's brothers call him 'lord of the land', and the Hebrew word for lord, אֲדֹנֵי (adonei), is plural in form. In Exodus 21:4, 'If his master gives him a wife', the word master is plural in form with a singular meaning, and in Exodus 21:29 so is the word for the ox's 'owner', who is plainly one man. Second, the plural of extension in section 2 shows that Hebrew uses plurals for greatness and fullness, face, life, water, without counting anything. Third, elohim is used with singular grammar of one pagan god, Chemosh or Dagon, where no plurality is meant. Fourth, the Amarna letters of the fourteenth century BC, written by Canaanite scribes to the king of Egypt, address the one king as my gods in the plural, which suggests a regional habit of honouring a single great ruler with a plural. Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar, in the English edition of Kautzsch and Cowley (1910), explains elohim this way, and Bruce Waltke and Michael O'Connor's An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax (1990) classes it as an honorific plural. On this reading the few plural verbs are the grammar following the form of the noun, not the meaning, and the Chronicler's change to a singular verb in 1 Chronicles 17:21 shows a later scribe treating the singular as normal. This is also how Jewish interpreters have read the word for two thousand years, and many Christian Hebraists agree that the noun's form proves nothing about persons in God.

The second reading sees in these plurals a real hint of plurality within the one God, which the New Testament later names as Father, Son and Spirit. It is important to state it in the form its best defenders use, because it is often stated badly. Its careful defenders separate two arguments. The weaker one rests on the plural ending of elohim alone, and many Trinitarian scholars set it aside: John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1:1, rejected the inference that the plural noun proves three persons and warned his readers against such forced readings, even though he went on to read the Us of Genesis 1:26 as the persons of the Godhead conferring. The stronger argument rests on everything else. A plural noun with singular verbs is one thing; but Scripture also uses plural verbs, plural adjectives and plural titles with this one God, as section 3 showed, and above all it puts plural speech in God's own mouth: 'Let Us make man' (Genesis 1:26), 'like one of Us' (Genesis 3:22), 'let Us go down' (Genesis 11:7), 'Who will go for Us?' (Isaiah 6:8).

Defenders of this reading press the evidence of the plural of majesty in return. Clear examples of a Hebrew king calling himself we are hard to find; the case usually cited, Ezra 4:18, where the Persian king writes 'The letter you sent us has been translated and read in my presence', is in Aramaic, from a Persian court, and moves straight from us to my. The label majesty is drawn from much later European royal custom. The plural forms for a human master are themselves unusual and are no more obviously majestic than full. And a reading that explains away every plural verb, adjective, title and pronoun used of God one at a time, they argue, has stopped letting the pattern speak. Their claim is not that Moses held the doctrine of the Trinity in the form the councils later gave it. It is that the Old Testament speaks of the one God in a way that leaves room for plurality, and that the New Testament fills that room when it calls the Son the one through whom all things were made (John 1:3, Colossians 1:16).

Defenders of the plural of majesty have their own reply. The plural verbs are few and scattered among thousands of singular ones, which is what one would expect if the grammar occasionally followed the form of the noun, and far too few to carry a doctrine. Genesis 20:13 is Abraham speaking to a pagan king, Abimelech, who would hear elohim as gods, and may be Abraham choosing words his hearer would understand. The plural participles of Ecclesiastes 12:1 and Isaiah 54:5 are the same kind of form as the plural master and owner of Exodus 21, used of one person. And to read these features as hints of persons, they argue, is to read the New Testament back into the Old rather than to let the Old Testament speak in its own idiom.

Where does that leave a student? With three settled things and one open one. Settled: the form of elohim is plural, and that by itself proves nothing about persons, as defenders of both readings agree. Settled: Israel's faith is that God is one, and nothing in the Hebrew plural pulls against that. Settled: the plural verbs and plural speech of God are real features of the text, not inventions, and an honest reading has to give an account of them. Open among careful interpreters, Christian and Jewish: whether those features are the language of honour and fullness, or the first light of something the rest of Scripture makes clear. The lesson The Trinity in Scripture, in the Systematic Theology track, weighs the doctrine on the whole biblical evidence, which is where it belongs.

Return to the anchor verse with this grammar in hand. נַעֲשֶׂה אָדָם (na'aseh adam, let us make man) has a first person plural verb, and בְּצַלְמֵנוּ כִּדְמוּתֵנוּ (betsalmenu kidmutenu, in our image, according to our likeness) has the ending -enu, our, twice. Then verse 27 turns to the singular: וַיִּבְרָא (vayyivra, and he created) and בְּצַלְמוֹ (betsalmo, in his image). One thing is settled before any reading begins. Hebrew has no capital letters. The BSB prints Us and Our with capitals because its translators capitalise pronouns that refer to God; the King James Version prints us and our in lower case. Neither choice is in the Hebrew. Each is a reading of the Hebrew, so do not argue from the capitals.

The first reading is the divine council. God is surrounded by a court of heavenly beings, as in 1 Kings 22:19-22, where the LORD asks his host who will entice Ahab, in Job 1:6, and in Psalm 82:1. In Isaiah 6:8 the LORD, among the seraphim, asks 'Who will go for Us?' On this reading God announces his intention to his court and then acts alone, which is why verse 27 is singular. The medieval Jewish commentator Rashi read the verse this way, saying that God consulted the heavenly host to teach humility, that the greater should consult the lesser. Its strength is that the council is a known feature of the Old Testament world. Its critics answer that nowhere does Scripture give angels a share in creating, that Isaiah 44:24 says God stretched out the heavens alone, and that verse 27 says humanity was made in the image of God, not of God and the angels. Its defenders reply that announcing a decision to a court is not sharing the work, and that Psalm 8:5 itself places humanity a little lower than elohim, a word that can mean the heavenly beings.

The second reading is a plural of self-deliberation. A speaker can address himself in the plural when resolving to act, much as a person alone may say let's see. Genesis 11:7, 'let Us go down', fits this well, and the reading keeps the strictly singular God of verse 27 without bringing in other beings. Its critics answer that clear examples of the idiom elsewhere in Hebrew are few; its defenders, that the let us form is a natural way to voice a resolve and needs no listener. The third reading is the royal plural, a plural of majesty extended to the pronoun: God speaks as kings speak. Its strength is its simplicity and its fit with the honorific use of elohim; its weakness is the thin evidence, noted above, for kings speaking so in Hebrew. Its defenders answer that a language which already honours the one God with a plural noun has shown the habit of mind, and that the pronoun follows the noun.

The fourth reading is the oldest Christian one: God speaks within himself, Father to Son and Spirit. Justin Martyr, writing in the second century in his Dialogue with Trypho, chapter 62, argued that God could not be speaking to angels or to the elements, and that the one addressed was a distinct person who was with the Father before creation, the one Scripture also calls Wisdom. Irenaeus, in Against Heresies book 4, said that God made humankind through his own hands, the Son and the Spirit, and needed no angels to help him. The reading's defenders point out that the only other actor named in Genesis 1 is the Spirit of God in verse 2; that the one or ones addressed share in the making, which angels never do; that the image is God's image, so the us whose image it is must be God; and that the singular verb of verse 27 fits a plurality that acts as one. Its critics answer that the first hearers could not have understood it so, and its defenders reply that a text can mean more than its first hearers saw without meaning something other than they saw.

Each reading has serious defenders, and each fits some features of the text better than others. Settled: the speech is plural and the act is singular, and any honest reading must hold both. Not settled, even among people who share a confession: who the Us includes. When you teach this verse, say what the Hebrew does: a plural speech, a singular creator, and one image of God shared by man and woman. Then give the readings fairly. The lesson The Image of God, in the Systematic Theology track, takes up what the image itself means. The BSB's 'and over all the earth itself' at the end of the verse is a separate question about the text, which Module 8 will show you how to check.

Every practical step in this track builds toward the capstone, a full study of one Old Testament passage of your choice. If you have not yet chosen it, choose now: three to eight verses of narrative, poetry or prophecy that you would like to preach or teach. Copy the verses from the BSB into your notebook, leaving two blank lines under each.

On your phone, open the passage on STEP Bible or Blue Letter Bible and tap each noun in turn. Under each line of your notebook copy, write the Hebrew noun's transliteration, its gender and its number: M or F, S, P or D. You do not need to write Hebrew letters yet if they are slow for you; the transliteration and the labels are enough. This is your noun map, and the next four lessons will add layers to it.

Then look for three things and mark them. Put a star by any dual and write what pair it names. Put a circle round any noun whose number in the parsing does not match its sense, a plural like face or life that means one thing, or a singular like man or people that takes a plural verb. And if a word for God appears, write down the number of every verb and adjective that agrees with it.

Finally, write two sentences at the bottom of the page. In the first, say what one of your circled words means and how the grammar shows it. In the second, say what you would need to know before making a theological point from the number of any noun in your passage. You will use both sentences when you write up the passage at the end of the track.