Is the Trinity in the Hebrew Bible? 7 claims, tested

Deuteronomy 6:4 reads, “Hear, Israel: Yahweh is our God. Yahweh is one.” Nehemiah 9:6 says, “You are Yahweh, even you alone”, and Psalm 83:18 says that his name is Yahweh and that he alone is the Most High over all the earth.^[1] Nobody disputes that these verses are there.

Christians accept the unity and add that it contains a plurality. The Hebrew Bible does not say so in a sentence. No verse in it states that God is three persons, or names a Father, a Son and a Holy Spirit together. A Christian who claims the doctrine is in the Hebrew Bible claims it by reading, and the next six entries test the readings.

It helps to say what the Christian claim is, since the reply depends on it. The doctrine says that God is one being in three persons, and it is drawn from the New Testament and from the creeds of the fourth century. The question for this article is narrower: whether the Hebrew Bible, read on its own, already teaches it. A reader who answers yes is saying that the New Testament only unveiled what the older book contained. A reader who answers no is saying that the older book was read in a new way by a later community.

Strength: firm. The unity is stated. The three persons are not stated in any verse.

In Genesis 1:26 God says, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness”. In Genesis 1:2 God’s Spirit hovers over the waters.^[2] Christian readers from the early church on have taken the plural and the Spirit as hints of the Trinity.

Jewish readers have taken the plural as God addressing his court, and Muslims can add that the Quran also speaks of God as “We” while teaching that God is one. Quran 15:9 says, “it is We who sent down the message, and indeed, We will be its guardian”.^[3] The “Spirit of God” in Genesis 1:2 is read by Jews and Muslims as God’s breath or power. A plural pronoun for a being who is addressing others, or speaking in majesty, does not show three persons.

Strength: thin as proof. The verses allow the Christian reading and do not require it.

Isaiah 9:6 says that a child is born and a son given, and that his name will be called “Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace”.^[4] Christians read the child as the Messiah and “Mighty God” as a statement that he is God.

The Hebrew phrase is el gibbor. Isaiah 10:20 to 21 uses the same words for Yahweh himself. Elsewhere the Hebrew Bible calls human and heavenly beings “gods”: Psalm 82:1 and 6 say, “God presides in the great assembly. He judges among the gods”, and, “You are gods, all of you are sons of the Most High”, and Psalm 45:6 addresses a king with “Your throne, God, is forever and ever”.^[5] A divine title in the Hebrew Bible does not always mean what it means when said of Yahweh. The Christian reply is that Isaiah 9:6 piles up titles and ends with ones that suit God alone. That reply is a reading of the whole phrase.

Strength: moderate. The phrase is striking, and it is not by itself a statement of identity with Yahweh.

In Genesis 16:7 to 13 the angel of Yahweh speaks to Hagar, and she calls the name of Yahweh who spoke to her, “You are a God who sees”. In Genesis 31:11 to 13 an angel of God says in a dream, “I am the God of Bethel”. In Exodus 3:2 to 6 the angel of Yahweh appears in the bush, and then God calls from the bush. In Judges 13:21 to 22 Manoah says, “We shall surely die, because we have seen God”, after seeing the angel.^[6]

These stories are the strongest ground for the Christian reading. A figure is called an angel and speaks in the first person as God. Jewish and Muslim readers answer that a messenger often speaks in the voice of the one who sent him, as a prophet says “Thus says Yahweh”, and that the text moves between the messenger and the sender for that reason. The Talmud takes up the same difficulty and gives a different answer, which the last entry looks at.

Strength: moderate. The passages are real and puzzling. They show a figure called both angel and God. They do not show three persons.

In 2 Samuel 23:2 to 3 David says, “Yahweh’s Spirit spoke by me. His word was on my tongue. The God of Israel said, the Rock of Israel spoke to me”. Isaiah 63:10 says that the people “rebelled, and grieved his holy Spirit”.^[7] Christians take these as signs of the Holy Spirit as a person.

The Hebrew Bible speaks of the Spirit of God as the means by which God inspires, empowers and is present. Prophets speak by it, and the people grieve it. Speaking of the Spirit as grieved does not make it a separate person, since the Hebrew Bible speaks of God’s arm and God’s face in the same way. The Quran too speaks of the Spirit, and in 5:110 it names the “Pure Spirit” who supported Jesus, which Saheeh International glosses as the angel Gabriel عليه السلام.^[8]

There is also the question of how the earliest readers took such passages. The Hebrew Bible was read in synagogues for centuries before the Gospels, and the surviving commentaries and translations of the period do not read these verses as pointing to a triune God. That silence is not a refutation, since a later revelation may disclose what the earlier readers missed. It does mean that the doctrine has to be argued from the New Testament and cannot be shown from the Hebrew Bible alone.

Strength: thin as proof of a third person. The texts are about God at work, and the Hebrew Bible does not separate that work from God.

Zechariah عليه السلام 12:10 has Yahweh say that he will pour out a spirit of grace and supplication, and that “they will look to me whom they have pierced; and they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for his only son”. John 19:37 quotes the line with a change: “They will look on him whom they pierced.”^[9] Christians read it as God speaking of the pierced Christ.

The change of pronoun from “me” to “him” is inside the verse. Jewish readers have taken the pierced one as a martyr or a leader, and some copyists and translators smoothed the pronoun. The verse is obscure and does not say anything about three persons. The Christian reading finds in it a God who is pierced, and the Hebrew gives no further support for that.

The Christian reading deserves its due. The verse speaks of God pouring out a spirit and of a mourning as for an only son, and the early Christians were quick to see a link with the death of Jesus. A reader who shares their faith will find the link striking. A reader who does not will find that the verse can bear it and does not need it, and that the grammar of the Hebrew is difficult enough to leave the matter unsettled.

Strength: thin. The verse is a difficulty for everyone. It cannot carry the doctrine alone.

The Talmud, in Sanhedrin 38b, tells of a heretic who asked Rav Idit why Exodus 24:1 says “Come up to the Lord” and not “Come up to Me”. Rav Idit answers that “the Lord” there is the angel Metatron, “whose name is like the name of his Master”, citing Exodus 23:20 to 21, where God says that his name is in the angel. The heretic asks whether, if so, the angel should be worshipped, and Rav Idit says no.^[10]

This shows two things. Some Jews and others in the early centuries spoke of a second figure bearing the divine name, and the rabbis took the matter seriously enough to answer it. It also shows that the rabbis refused to worship him. A second power is not a Trinity. Scholars who say that early Judaism knew of a figure beside God do not say that it knew of three persons in one God, and no text from before the New Testament states a Trinity.

The Quran states the Muslim position on the matter plainly: “do not say, ‘Three’; desist – it is better for you. Indeed, Allāh is but one God” (4:171), and “He is Allāh, who is One” (112:1).^[11] Strength: firm that no pre-Christian text states a Trinity, and moderate that a second-power tradition existed.