Elohim and Monotheism

"God presides in the great assembly. He judges among the gods" (Psalm 82:1). The same Hebrew word, elohim, appears twice in that single line, for two entirely different kinds of referent — and that double use is not an accident of translation. It is the key to the whole question.
Elohim functions in Hebrew as a category term — "beings of the spiritual realm" — not as an exclusive personal name or title reserved for Yahweh alone. Scripture can therefore use the same word for Yahweh and for other, created spiritual beings without any confusion resulting, because the term denotes a kind of being, not a claim of equal status or rivalry. Psalm 82:1 shows this structure directly: the singular elohim of Israel presiding in judgment over the plural elohim of the assembly — one clearly ruling, many clearly ruled. This affirms Yahweh's uniqueness rather than threatening it. He alone is uncreated, all-powerful, and the judge of every other so-called god; a hierarchy of authority, not a pantheon of competing equals bargaining as rivals the way the surrounding nations imagined their gods. Deuteronomy 6:4's foundational confession, "Hear, Israel: Yahweh is our God. Yahweh is one," stands untouched by any of this — it is a claim about Yahweh's singular status and total supremacy, not a claim that no other spiritual beings of any kind exist anywhere in the universe he made.
Some readers try to avoid a plurality of spiritual beings out of concern that it might threaten Israel's monotheism. It need not. A council of real, created elohim under Yahweh's unrivaled authority is fully compatible with — not a threat to — the affirmation that there is only one true God in the fullest sense: uncreated, all-powerful, without rival in being, and answered to by every other elohim that exists.