Who is God referring to in Genesis 1:26 when He says, “Let us make man in our image”? Is it the Trinity, angels, or something else? In this video, Jimmy Akin explores the meaning behind this passage, examining whether the common explanation of the “royal we” aligns with Hebrew language and tradition.
Transcript:
Um, I was listening to the first reading this morning, and the, um, it was talking about the creation of man, and all of a sudden, it changed from singular to plural, where it said, “God—then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish and sea,’ etc.” So I was just wondering, um, on your take on how it went from singular to plural.
Okay, okay. Well, one theory that you hear some folks propose is that this is the Royal We. The Royal We is used when someone of very high authority—often a monarch, which is why it’s called the Royal We—speaks of themselves in the plural. And a famous example of this is the phrase attributed to Queen Victoria, where she allegedly said, “We are not amused,” meaning “I am not amused.” But because she was using the Royal We, um, she said it in the plural.
And so some people have said, “Oh, well, there’s no one else here at this time, so God must be using the Royal We.” Well, okay, that’s a proposal you commonly hear. But the problem is, the Royal We exists in Latin, and it exists in English, and it exists in a few other languages, but it does not exist in Hebrew. There is no Royal We in Hebrew. So, um, so God is not actually talking of himself as a single individual using a plural, uh, using plural pronouns.
Um, so who might he be talking to? Well, some people have seen here an allusion to the Holy Trinity. And if you want to say that within the spiritual sense of the text, there’s an allusion to the Holy Trinity here, I think that’s totally fine. But the Holy Trinity had not been clearly revealed in the Old Testament period. And so that makes it unlikely that that’s what is the literal sense of the text, which is the one that the human author of Genesis would have been aware of.
Okay, so what we need to do to figure out who God is referring to here is say, well, who would the Hebrew author of Genesis have understood him to be talking to? Who are the—who’s available in the Hebrew worldview for God to be talking to and saying this stuff to about “Let us make man in our image,” and so forth?
Um, and the answer is pretty clear, because even though the Trinity had not been revealed in Old Testament times—certainly not in a clear way—the idea that God was all alone in heaven was not part of the Hebrew worldview. Um, God was depicted as a Heavenly King ruling over creation. And any king has his court. And so, uh, Hebrews understood that, yeah, God is the creator, he’s at the top of everything, but he’s like any king—he’s going to have a heavenly court around him.
And in scholarly literature, this court is called the Divine Council. And today we would refer to the members of the Divine Council as angels. Um, that term was a little more restricted—I mean, technically, an angel is a messenger. So angels or messengers are part of the Divine Council, but they’re like the low-ranking guys. They just run messages here and there. Um, there are much higher officials in the Divine Council that, you know, aren’t—they’re not just the little nobodies at the bottom. Um, and they wouldn’t have been called angels in the, in the Old Testament, but they are today because language changes over time.
So the natural understanding of, well, who would the Hebrew author of Genesis have envisioned God talking to? It would have been the Divine Council. And so that’s who God’s talking to here.
Now, that raises a related question of, did members of the Divine Council actually do anything, or did God do it all himself? And you might suppose, well, if he says, “Let’s do this,” you might suppose, um, that it—more than just God is going to be involved in the creation of man. But that is not a requirement of the language, because I could say—let’s say, let’s say Cy Kellett and I are getting together after the show, and I’m planning on buying dinner for us. And I say, “Cy, let’s get pizza.”
All I’m asking for Cy to do here is consent. I’m going to pay for the pizza. I’m going to order the pizza. I’m just associating Cy with my plan to get pizza, which I, of course, know he’s going to agree to.
So, so, um, yeah, so, so that seems to be what God is doing here. He’s using—just like I used just now—what you could call an associative we, where I’m associating Cy with my action of buying pizza. It appears God is using an associative we with the Divine Council, not expecting the Divine Council to do anything. He’s the Creator, and the text makes it clear that God, not the Divine Council, created man.
But, um, he’s associating the Divine Council with his own action of creating man. And so it appears that God is talking to the Divine Council, and that he’s using an associative we in talking about his plan to create man.
Okay, Jennifer?
Yes, thank you! I think my puppy agrees too.
Oh, you—oh, good! Thank you so much.
All right, a Bible-loving puppy! Thank you. Glad to have your puppy’s approval.