In the Tanakh, "’elōhîm" is the normal word for a god or the great God (or gods, given that the 'im' suffix makes a word plural in Hebrew). But the form "’El" also appears, mostly in poetic passages and in the patriarchal narratives attributed to the Priestly source of the documentary hypothesis. It occurs 217 times in the Masoretic Text: seventy-three times in the Psalms and fifty-five times in the Book of Job, and otherwise mostly in poetic passages or passages written in elevated prose. It occasionally appears with the definite article as "hā’Ēl" 'the god' (for example in ).