Most English readers meet אֱלֹהִים (elohim) only as “God” — the ordinary Hebrew word for the God of Israel, appearing thousands of times across the Scriptures. What almost no one is told is how wide the word actually runs. It’s plural in form, the way “scissors” is plural in form, and its range is remarkable. It can mean the one God of Israel. It can mean the “gods” of the other nations. It can mean heavenly beings — the “sons of God” of Genesis and Job. It can mean human judges: in Exodus, when a legal case is brought “before God” to be decided, the word is elohim, and the old Jewish renderings translate it plainly as “the judges.” It can even name, in one eerie passage, the spirit of the dead prophet Samuel, called up at Endor and described as elohim “coming up out of the earth.” One word, stretched from the Most High God to a human magistrate to a ghost summoned from the grave.

That breadth is the entire engine of Psalm 82 — the psalm Jesus quotes in his own defense in John 10. The psalm opens: “God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment.” And here the word does two jobs in a single verse. The elohim who stands and judges is the God of Israel; the elohim he stands among and judges are the “gods.” Same Hebrew word, twice, once for the Judge and once for the judged. The Greek translation Jesus’ audience read didn’t soften it either — it spoke of God standing “in the assembly of gods” and judging “gods” in the midst. The plural was sitting right there, in their own Bible.

Because the word is this wide, the psalm carries not one meaning but three serious ones, and they all hang on how you fill in elohim. If the “gods” are corrupt human judges, then Scripture called mere men “gods.” If they’re Israel receiving the word at Sinai, then Scripture called the whole congregation “gods.” If they’re the divine beings of God’s heavenly court, then Scripture has an entire category of “gods” beneath the Most High. The justice-language pulls toward judges; the council scene pulls toward heavenly beings; the phrase “those to whom the word of God came” pulls toward Israel.

And this is precisely why Jesus’ argument is so robust: it doesn’t need the question settled. Whoever the elohim are, the word “gods” is demonstrably not reserved to one being alone in the Hebrew Scriptures — so the charge of blasphemy for the lesser title “Son of God” cannot stick. The breadth of one Hebrew word, elohim, put a whole murderous crowd back on its heels.