Elgers was born in 1585 in Valmiera and studied at Riga Dome School. Since 1605 he studied at the Braunsberg Jesuit School in Eastern Prussia, then studied rhetoric at the Polotsk School of theology. In 1607 he entered the Jesuit Order. In 1609 he studied philosophy at the Brownsburg Jesuit Collegium and worked as a grammar teacher. In 1612 he was sent to study philosophy at the Nesvizh Jesuit College. From 1615, as a Catholic priest, he worked at the Jesuit collegiums in the Pardaugava Duchy in Riga and Cesis as well as in Kurzeme and Zemgale Duchy Jesuit organisations in Ilukste and Jelgava.
In 1619, he mastered the Jesuit Order settlement and practiced austerity in the Nesvizh Jesuit Collegium. In 1621, when the King of Sweden Gustav Adolf approached Riga, Elger returned to Prussia, where, in 1621 in Braunsberg was published his book of Latvian Catholic spiritual songs with notes (“Geistliche catolische Gesänge …”), the only known copy of which is at the Library of the University of Vilnius. From 1625 to 1631 he was engaged in Jesuit missions in Latgale, Polotsk, Orsha, Zhemaitia. From 1631 to 1634, he, as a Polish-Lithuanian chaplain, participated in the war with the Tsardom of Russia, but later worked in the Smolensk and Orsha Jesuit institutions, which at that time were under Polish-Lithuanian rule. Around 1637-1638 he arrived in Daugavpils, where he worked as a lecturer (litterarum humanarum lector et operarius) at the Jesuit Collegium until the end of his life and translated the texts of the Catholic Church in Latvian, which were printed in Vilnius mostly after his death. During the Second North War he, together with other Daugavpils Jesuits, was sheltered by the owner of the Ilūkste Manor, Sibilla Lidinghauzen Wolf-Ziberg. Georgs Elgers died on September 30, 1672 in Daugavpils.
The fragments of the gospel translated by Elgers in 1672 were printed in the book “Evangelia toto anno singulis Dominicis et festis diebus juxta antiquam Ecclesiae consuetudinem in Livonia Lothavis praelegi solita” (“The Gospels for all the holidays of the year, which, according to the old church, it is customary to read to the Livonian Latvians”). In the same year was also Elgers’ translated catechism printed – “Catechismus seu brevis institutio doctrinae Christianae guingue capitibus comprehensa in gratiam gentis Lothavicae” (“Catehism or a brief explanation of Christian teaching in five chapters for the good of the Latvian people”). One year later, in 1673, Elgers’s songbook “Cantines spirituales ex latinis, germanicis et polonicis translatae…” (“Spiritual Songs Translated from Latin, German and Polish, with several additions”) was published. In 1683, Elgers compiled a three-language dictionary „Dictionarium polono – latino – lottavicum, opus R.P.Georgii Elger S.I. in gratiam studiosae juventutis in lucen datum” (“Polish – Latin – Latvian dictionary, the work by the honourable Jesuit father G. Elgers, for the benefit of studying youth educated in light”). Elgers was the first who described the syllable intonation in Latvian. In his work he used the orthography of a polish script.