Rabbi Tovia Singer is the gift that keeps on giving. Today, I’m going to totally destroy, obliterate, his attempt at destroying the Trinity. There are Christians who see a title, or watch a video, and think, if he’s right, it’s all lies.

This article will help you if you are struggling with accepting the Trinity. This will help you if you think the Trinity is a new invention, hundreds of years after Christ, or if you hear arguments against the Trinity.

The arguments and reasoning from Rabbi Tovia Singer in this article are mostly terrible.

Tovia Singer Talks About The Trinity In The Old Testament

For the most part, this is Rabbi Singer discussing the Trinity in the Old Testament. Let’s begin with how we got here.

The host says,

Christians will say, well, because of the Trinity relationship, the Triune relationship between Jesus, God, and the Holy Spirit, God is the Messiah technically because Jesus is God. And they’ll go through the Old Testament, quote a verse from Genesis 1:26 and others, and Genesis 18:1-2, and say, okay, the Old Testament seems to be, the Hebrew Bible seems to portray God as three different people. Like when Abraham looks up, when he looks up at the Lord in Genesis 18:1-2, it says, behold, he saw three men. And so Christians look at that, oh Trinity, God’s three different people, right?

Right from the start, you can see this is very misleading at best. We are about to hear Rabbi Singer destroy an interpretation of one passage, not a destruction of the Trinity in the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament. Those are two different tasks. Christians who argue for the Trinity in the Old Testament use more than Genesis 18, the rabbi knows this.

In his defence, this got posted on someone else’s channel.

Let’s continue.

Rabbi Singer says,

“Schloshah enoshim, Genesis 18 means three men, right? And those three men, you are to believe, are referring to the Trinity, they are the three gods, brilliant, brilliant. Why don’t you just go to concordance and look up the word 3 and every time it comes up, just put in Trinity.”

Is Genesis 18 About The Trinity?

Genesis 18 is a great Old Testament passage where God visits Abraham. Jewish sources like Rashi mention God visits Abraham as he recovers from circumcision. Because there’s three men, some have argued this is a reference to the Trinity. Some important names through history held this view.

But the problem is, this is not the main interpretation by Christians. So anyone who thinks Rabbi Singer is destroying the Trinity is wrong. He’s not even destroying the main Christian interpretation of this passage.

The main interpretation by Christians is, God appeared to Abraham with two angels. This is the most accurate and clear interpretation of this passage. I’m not going to break this down, but anyone who reads the passage without an agenda sees it. This is the likeliest interpretation you will come to.

So I’ve shown you, most don’t believe the three men are the Trinity. Anything else he says about that is irrelevant. For the sake of this post, the three men are God appearing in physical form and two angels appearing in physical form.

Genesis 19:1-2 describes the two men as angels, whereas the other man gets called God in chapters 18 and 19, not the generic title for God either. The Hebrew tetragrammaton, the four letters YHWH. This is important for the next argument Rabbi Singer tries to make. Pay close attention…

There is an unconventional way of conveying information in the Hebrew Bible. I mean, we would never do that today, but in the Jewish scriptures, an angel can be called God, a prophet can be called God, and it’s just interchangeable. A judge sitting in a Jewish court, see Exodus 21 and 22, literally is called Elohim. When Moses pleads with God, “I’m just not up to delivering the children of Israel,” his last argument, “I’m an aral sephachayim, I have a speech impediment,” that’s how Genesis, excuse me, Exodus chapter 6 ends, right? Exodus 7:1 God says to Moses, “Okay, you will be a god to Pharaoh and Aaron, who did not have a speech problem, he’ll be your prophet, mean he’ll talk on your behalf.” Doesn’t mean Moses was God, right? So that can be exploited.

Tovia Singer Doesn’t Address The Real Christian Argument

That sounds good from the outset, but that’s not the argument Christians are making. Different people get called Elohim in Hebrew, which gets translated as God, but the four-letter Hebrew name is different.

The one man in Genesis 18 and 19 is not called Elohim, but Hashem (the name). Rabbi Singer uses this to say angels get called God, so don’t believe this is God appearing as a man. So look at what he says here when talking about who destroyed Sodom.

“And in case you’re wondering, you know, those angels are interchanged with God, see Genesis 19:13 and 14 see explicitly. I mean who is destroying Sodom who? God or the angels? Well, it depends, the angels doing what God sends him to do.”

This is a good question to ask, but one which is clear as you read through Genesis 18 and into 19. But verse 13 is the angels speaking, verse 14 is Lot speaking. The angels say we will destroy this place; the Lord sent us to destroy it. Lot doesn’t spread that message though. He says The Lord will destroy the place.

This matches what God said to Abraham in chapter 18. And also what happens later in the chapter when Sodom and Gomorrah gets destroyed. The question is…was Lot wrong or right? The context leans towards Lot being correct that it was the Lord.

Who Destroyed Sodom & Gomorrah (God or Angels)?

The angels got sent ahead to see if its destruction was valid. Their report leads to Sodom’s destruction. In that way, their report and rescue of Lot is destroying the place. Without those things happening, in fact, the place would not get destroyed.

It’s like if I sent my daughter ahead of me to find a pack of grapes worth eating, to bring to the counter for me to buy. She then goes, picks out a pack of grapes, and on her way to the counter, tells someone she came to buy these grapes. Without her actions, those grapes would not get bought. She could say she is buying them, but I’m the one who will buy the grapes with money.

It’s not that hard to understand when you think through the two chapters.

God said to Abraham he would go down and see, even though he sent the angels to see first. So when God gets there, the angels say it should get destroyed, and God destroys the place.

And this is why Rabbi Tovia Singer’s advice at the end is so funny to me…

“So it’s a horrible idea if you want to prove the doctrine of the Trinity. You are much better off quoting from the minutes of the council of Nicaea, from the Nicene Creed. There you have the doctrine of the Trinity. You have a much wiser idea to appeal to a corrupt text, like 1st John chapter 5, verses 7 and 8, go to that. Don’t use Genesis 18 and 19. That’s not friendly territory.”

Why Rabbi Singer’s Advice Is Bad For Christians 🙂 

As I already said, the main interpretation of this text is God appeared on earth with two angels. That’s why verse 24 of chapter 19 has had Jews scratching heads for centuries…

“Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven.”

The Jewish commentators cannot make up their mind about what this means. Some say it’s God and his angels, some say it’s Gabriel on earth destroying Sodom by God’s power, some have no clue.

Some even say God is speaking in the third person here, like others do at times in the Bible. The big problem with that is, God is not speaking in this verse.

Moses is, as the narrator of Genesis.

Moses is saying Hashem rained fire and brimstone from Hashem in heaven. Two Hashems? One in heaven, one appearing in physical form on earth as a man, and the Holy Spirit has already been mentioned.

That’s only one verse that leads Christians to believe in the plurality of the Godhead. But Rabbi Singer is not the only person who thinks he can debunk the Trinity. Muslims try too, and they keep giving us balls to knock out of the park. God bless.

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