What does 'let us make' mean in Genesis 1:26?

The verse is short, and the grammatical anomaly is the whole point:

וַיֹּ֣אמֶר אֱלֹהִ֔ים נַֽעֲשֶׂ֥ה אָדָ֖ם בְּצַלְמֵ֖נוּ כִּדְמוּתֵ֑נוּ

vayyomer Elohim na'aseh adam be-tsalmenu ki-demutenu

"And God said, 'Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness.'" — Genesis 1:26 (MT)

The verb is na'aseh (נַעֲשֶׂה, H6213, "to make"), Qal imperfect first-person common plural — a 1cp form. The possessive suffixes that follow (tsalmenu, "our image"; demutenu, "our likeness") are also 1cp. The plural is not a textual variant. The Septuagint preserves it without softening: ποιήσωμεν ἄνθρωπον — "let us make humankind," first-person plural aorist subjunctive (LXX Gen 1:26). Four Dead Sea Scrolls fragments that cover this verse — 4Q2, 4Q4, 4Q10, and 4Q483 — all confirm the plural in the Hebrew text. There is no manuscript reading where the verb is singular.

This matters because the chapter's verbs are otherwise singular. Across the previous twenty-five verses, Elohim — a grammatically plural noun — takes singular verbs throughout: bara (he created, 3ms), vayyomer (he said, 3ms), vayyar (he saw, 3ms), vayyikra (he named, 3ms). For exactly one speech, in verse 26, the grammar shifts. Then the very next verse reverts: vayyivra Elohim et-ha-adam be-tsalmo, be-tselem Elohim bara oto — "and God created (3ms) humankind in his image; in the image of God he created (3ms) him" (Gen 1:27, MT). Three uses of bara in v. 27, all singular.

So the deliberation is plural; the act is singular.

Three readings are grammatically possible.

Plural of majesty / deliberation. Biblical Hebrew sometimes uses plural forms for emphasis or formal self-address. The noun Elohim is itself grammatically plural with singular reference throughout the chapter (2,603 occurrences of the noun across the Hebrew Bible, almost always with singular agreement when referring to the God of Israel). On this reading, the 1cp verb is a stylistic intensifier — God deliberating with himself for the first creature whose making is qualitatively distinct.

Divine council address. Elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, God appears to speak to a heavenly assembly (1 Ki 22:19–23, MT; Isa 6:8, MT — "whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" — same 1cp pattern). On this reading, the 1cp in Gen 1:26 is God addressing his heavenly host. Note the limit: the act itself is performed by God alone (v. 27 is singular), and the image is Elohim's, not the council's. So even on this reading, the council does not co-create the image — they hear the deliberation.

Trinitarian anticipation. Read backward from John 1:1–3 (all things were made through him, TAGNT) and Colossians 1:16 (in him all things were created, TAGNT), the New Testament identifies the Son as the agent of creation. On this reading, the 1cp form anticipates the inner-divine plurality that the rest of the canon develops. The Genesis text does not state this; the NT framework is consistent with it but the verse alone does not demand it.

The grammar by itself does not pick one. What the grammar does say is that whatever the plural means inside the speech, the action outside the speech is singular. The four parallel 1cp divine speeches in the OT (Gen 1:26; Gen 3:22 — "let us go down"; Gen 11:7 — "let us go down and confuse their language"; Isa 6:8 — "who will go for us") all share that feature: plural inside the speech, singular action surrounding it.

The honest answer is that the verse does not resolve the question, and labelling the plural as definitively any one of the three is going beyond the grammar. What the verse does establish is that the making of the human is preceded by deliberation — not by command. Days 1–5 begin with vayyomer Elohim, yehi... ("let there be..."), a jussive directed at the thing being made. Day 6 alone begins with a cohortative directed inward: "let us make." The shift in verb-form, regardless of what the plural names, marks the human's making as categorically different from everything that preceded it.

For the full treatment — including the triple bara of verse 27, the tselem/demut hendiadys, and how the imago Dei moves from Hebrew tselem to Greek εἰκών and finally to Christ in Colossians 1:15 — see the study on The Creation Week.