cussion of the question; viz. the
distinction in the use of the two Hebrew names for God,--Elohim and
Jehovah. It will be necessary to offer a brief explanation of this
distinction, in order that we may be able to perceive the line at which
fact ends and hypothesis commences, and understand the character of the
criticism which we are describing.

It is now generally admitted that the word _Elohim_ is the name for Deity,
as worshipped by the Hebrew patriarchs; _Jehovah_, the conception of Deity
which is at the root of the Mosaic theocracy.(789) El, or the plural
Elohim, means literally "the powers," (the plural form being either, as
some unreasonably think, a trace of early polytheism, or more probably
merely emphatic,(790)) and is connected with the name for God commonly
used in the Semitic nations. Jehovah(791) means "self-existent," and is
the name specially communicated to the Israelites. The idea of power or
superiority in the object of worship was conveyed by Elohim; that of
self-existence, spirituality, by Jehovah. Elohim was generic, and could be
applied to the gods of the heathen; Jehovah was specific, the covenant God
of Moses. (33)

In this age, when words are separated from things, we are apt to lose
sight of the importance of the difference of names in an early age of the
world. The modern investigations however of comparative mythology enable
us to realize the fact, that in the childhood of the world words implied
real differences in things; not merely in our conceptions, but in the
thing conceived.(792) But the explanations above offered will show that,
independently of the general law of mind just noticed, a really different
moral conception was offered by Providence to the Hebrew mind through the
employment of these two words.

Nor was the difference unknown or forgotten in later ages of Jewish
history. The fifty-third Psalm, for example, is a repetition of the
fourteenth with the name Elohim altered into Jehovah. In the two first of
the five books into which the Psalms are divided, the arrangement has been
thought to be not unconnected with the distinction of these names.(793) In
the book of Job also the name Jehovah is used in the headings of the
speeches of the dialogues; but in the speeches of Job's friends, as not
being Israelites, the name Elohim is used.(794) In the book of Nehemiah
the name Elohim is almost always used, and in Ezra, Jehovah; and in the
composition of proper names, which in anci