EXODUS 12:12: HOW MANY GODS ARE THERE?

In Exodus 12:12, God Himself appears to acknowledge the existence of other gods.

But that may not be the correct meaning of this verse. As these three commentators explain, Egypt's so-called gods were shown to be totally powerless to prevent the plagues visited on them by God, demonstrating their basic non-existence.

R. Allen Cole, Exodus: “This may refer to the way in which the plagues affected the Nile and the various animal symbols of the gods of the Egyptians, or it may refer to the defeat of the spiritual powers that stand behind these symbols.”

Bernard Ramm, His Way Out: “Yahweh again showed that He is the living God, and the gods of the Egyptians but dead pieces of stone or wood or precious metal.”

Robert Gordon, International Bible Commentary: “The gods of Egypt were also to be brought into judgment. Their ineffectualness had been demonstrated in the earlier plagues when the natural forces thought to be under their jurisdiction were seen to be in control of a higher power.”

Another approach is expressed this way: “It was only in the course of history that the belief in the superiority of Israel's God over all other gods led to the development of absolute monotheism.” New International Dictionary of OT Theology and Exegesis One commentator has said that “the OT writers preserve their strong monotheism albeit with a hint of henotheism.” (Twelvetree, New Dictionary of Biblical Theology, p. 796)

Many Bible scholars feel that the Jews first believed in henotheism (one God over the other gods) rather than in monotheism, and the fuller truth was only revealed to them after the Babylonian captivity. It is actually pretty easy to demonstrate this progressive revelation of God's nature to the Jews in the Bible: God made a covenant with Abraham, revealed his personal name to Moses, henotheism is probably taught in the Ten Commandments, the prophets taught absolute monotheism, Jesus is revealed as the son of God, and finally at Pentacost the Jews experienced the Holy Spirit.

 As G. L. Bray explains (in New Dictionary of Biblical Theology, p. 512) concerning monotheism and henotheism, “From a theological point, however, there is little or no difference between the two options. Whatever the Israelites may have thought about the gods of the nations around them, they always regarded their own God as supremely powerful and thus 'real' in a way that the others were not. We may therefore conclude that Israel practiced a de facto monotheism from earliest times, even if this was not fully clarified until the time of the exile or later.”