The God of the Old Testament: One Jehovah, Yet a Plurality of Persons

For many readers of the Bible, the Old Testament seems to portray God in strictly singular terms—one God, one Lord, one ruler of heaven and earth. And this is true: the Shema declares, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one” (Deut. 6:4). Yet, a closer look at Israel’s Scriptures—and how Jewish interpreters understood them—reveals a fascinating and more complex reality. The God of Israel was indeed one, yet He was sometimes revealed in more than one person or manifestation.

This tension between unity and plurality has deep roots in the Hebrew Bible and Jewish tradition, and it sets the stage for the later Christian confession of the Trinity.

Divine Plurality in the Hebrew Bible

The Old Testament often hints at God’s plurality without compromising His oneness. For instance:

• In Genesis 1:26, God declares, “Let us make man in our image.” The plural form invites the question—who is the “us”?

• In Genesis 19:24, we read that “the Lord (Jehovah) rained brimstone and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah, from the Lord (Jehovah) out of the heavens.

• Passages like Daniel 7 present a “Son of Man” who comes before the Ancient of Days, receiving authority and glory that belong to God alone.

Such passages stretch beyond a simplistic monotheism and point toward a more layered understanding of the divine identity.

“Two Powers in Heaven”

The rabbinic tradition itself preserves evidence of this plurality. In Alan Segal’s classic work, Two Powers in Heaven, he traces early Jewish debates about a “second power” alongside God in heaven. Rabbis of the first centuries AD considered it heretical to speak of two divine powers, but the very fact that they debated it shows the idea was once widespread in Jewish thought.¹

This concept explains why early Christians—who proclaimed Jesus as sharing in the divine identity—fit into a recognizable, though controversial, stream of Jewish theology. For them, confessing Jesus as Lord was not inventing a new God but recognizing the fullness of the God already revealed in Israel’s Scriptures.

The “Bodies of God”

In Benjamin Sommer’s The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel, the argument is made that God sometimes manifests Himself in more than one localized form simultaneously.² Unlike the rigid philosophical concept of an indivisible deity, the Hebrew Bible presents God as able to appear in different places and in different “bodies” without ceasing to be the one YHWH.

For example, while God dwells in heaven, His presence fills the Temple (1 Kings 8:27), and He can also appear in human form (as in Genesis 32, when Jacob wrestles with a man yet declares, “I have seen God face to face”). Sommer demonstrates that this “fluidity” of God’s presence is integral to the Old Testament worldview.

“Two Gods in Heaven”

In Peter Schäfer’s Two Gods in Heaven, the focus is on ancient Jewish traditions that spoke of God in dual terms—especially a higher and lower Yahweh, or a visible and invisible form of God.³ These traditions circulated in Second Temple Judaism and early rabbinic thought, further demonstrating that the idea of divine plurality was not foreign to Judaism.

Such beliefs became contentious once Christians identified the second figure with Jesus Christ, but their Jewish roots are undeniable.

One God, Yet Complex

Taken together, these sources paint a picture: Israel’s God was always understood as one, yet within that oneness existed complexity, plurality, and even personhood distinctions.

This doesn’t mean Israel believed in “two gods.” Rather, it means that the fullness of the one true God could be encountered in multiple ways—sometimes as the unseen Father, sometimes as the Angel of the Lord, sometimes as the Word or Wisdom of God, and ultimately, Christians believe, as the Son made flesh.

The Old Testament, then, is not at odds with the New Testament doctrine of the Trinity. On the contrary, the Hebrew Scriptures and Jewish traditions about divine plurality laid the foundation for it.

Conclusion

The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is one God—but He has always revealed Himself in ways that suggest a richness within His oneness. The early Christians were not breaking away from Judaism when they confessed Jesus as divine; they were recognizing that the “second power” hinted at in Scripture and Jewish tradition had stepped into history.

As the apostle John put it: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:1, 14).

Notes

1. Alan F. Segal, Two Powers in Heaven: Early Rabbinic Reports about Christianity and Gnosticism (Leiden: Brill, 1977).

2. Benjamin D. Sommer, The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009).

3. Peter Schäfer, Two Gods in Heaven: Jewish Concepts of God in Antiquity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020).

Bibliography

Segal, Alan F. Two Powers in Heaven: Early Rabbinic Reports about Christianity and Gnosticism. Leiden: Brill, 1977.

Sommer, Benjamin D. The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Schäfer, Peter. Two Gods in Heaven: Jewish Concepts of God in Antiquity. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020.