Aure,

I'm not a Hebrew scholar, but did study it for semester in Bible School. Here we have your classic would-be biblical scholars that think they are experts in biblical Hebrew.

This is the way cults gets started.

The word Elohim literally means the mighty ones — it is a plural noun. In Hebrew, as in many other languages, we have exceptions to the rule. In this case, in order to make the word Mighty One plural, it also gets a female declension. No where is the word Elohim or it's component parts and roots used to mean mother.

No where in the Talmud or Mishnah do we see such an interpretation. Many scholars, both Jewish and Christian, have noticed the plural nature of the noun. That nuance certainly wasn't explored by most Jewish scholars, however as Christians looking back, we can see that it is an allusion to the Triune God (The Trinity).

For the most part Elohim is the word God chooses when He is revealing His sovereignty and might. Yahweh or Jehovah is the name He uses to reveal His self-existing nature and covenant.

Now we know that in the God Head, God Transcends all gender. However, God has revealed Himself in the Person of Jesus Christ, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, all masculine persons.

• In the Old Testament, God or Yahweh is the Husband and Israel is the Wife.
• In the New Testament, Jesus is the Bridegroom and the Church is the Bride.

This sort of eisegesis (the process of interpreting a text or portion of text in such a way that it introduces one's own presuppositions, agendas, and/or biases into and onto the text.) is very common with cults.

They like to:

• take a couple words from the Greek or Hebrew that have layered meanings
• show them to people who are biblically illiterate to begin with, too many of them cradle Catholics, sad to say, and
• they use one or two words from one or two verses to:
  • convince people to leave the faith or
  • adopt a heresy.

This group is no different.

I suggest you simply stay away from the this group, however, if they continue to harass you,
ask them to show their credentials in Biblical Hebrew. Compare that to 2,000 years of linguistic scholarship in the Church by great minds such as St. Jerome!

John

Hi, Aure —

This is just bizarre.

• Why does a plural form imply a mother God?

That doesn't even make any sense. God in Scripture is consistently referred to in masculine terminology (pronouns and so forth). There are a few images in the Psalms where God is compared to a mother, but they don't call God mother — they are just literary constructs.

One of them compares Him to a hen, but we don't suggest He is a chicken! There is another instances in Proverbs where Jesus is prefigured as Wisdom, which is a feminine word, grammatically, but that is only grammar. It doesn't mean He's a woman (clearly, He is not).

There is a mother in Scripture; she is Mary, and the Church (Revelation 12:17, Galatians 4:31). God is never identified as mother, but only as Father (e.g., Matthew 6:9, where Jesus expressly teaches us to call God Father).

As for the bride in Revelation:

• the first point, a bride is not a mother, these are two different concepts.
• the second point, the bride here is the Church:
  
  See 2 Corinthians 11:2 and Ephesians 5:31-32.

Eric