Something strange happens in Genesis. For five days, God speaks in the singularācommanding light, sculpting mountains, filling seas with life. “Let there be,” He says, and reality obeys. The voice is solitary, absolute, needing no counsel or confirmation. Then, at the climax of creation, when the moment arrives to form humanity, the grammar breaks. God shifts to plural:
The change is jarring, deliberate, impossible to ignore. Who is God suddenly addressing? And why does the sovereign Creator of all things require a partner only now, only here, only for us?
Rabbi Pinchas Polonsky offers a compelling answer that cuts through centuries of speculation. God is not speaking to angels, to a heavenly council, or to a pre-existent soul. He is speaking to Adam himselfāto the man about to be created, and by extension, to every human being who will ever live. The plural verb na’aseh, let us make, signals a partnership between the divine and the human. God is saying: “Let usāyou and I togetherāmake a man out of you.”
This reading reveals why humanity stands apart from the rest of creation. The animals received their final form in a single divine act. The lion emerged complete with fangs and instinct. The eagle took flight with wings fully fashioned for the sky. But humanity? Humanity enters the world unfinished. We are born incomplete, holding within us only the potential for what we might become. The partnership God proposes is the lifelong work of human transformation.
This is the meaning embedded in the plural verb. Man is the only creature who must actively participate in his own creation. When God forms us at birth, He does not fashion us complete. We are given the blueprint, the potential, the raw materials for who we can become. The construction itself requires our effort, our choices and our partnership with the divine will.
This explains why the verb is plural only for humanity. The heavens did not collaborate in their own formation. The seas did not choose their boundaries. Even the animals, with all their complexity and beauty, remain what they were made to be. A wolf cannot decide to become something other than a wolf. But a human being? A human must grow, develop and actualize the potential embedded within. We can reach toward the fullness of the divine image or remain perpetually stunted, locked in an immature version of ourselves.
Every person inherits this same divine invitation: “Let us make a man out of you.” The call echoes across generations. It reaches into the present moment where each of us stands, perpetually unfinished, perpetually in process. God refuses to complete us without our consent, without our participation. Instead, He extends His hand and waits for us to take it.
This teaching carries a weight that should shake us from our complacency. We are not finished products waiting for heaven. We are construction sites, works in progress, beings caught between what we are and what we might become. The gap between these two states is the space where our choices matter, where our actions have consequence, where character is forged or frittered away.
The modern world tries to convince us that we are fixed, determined by genetics, upbringing, or circumstance. The Bible declares something else entirely. You are not done. Your humanity is not a givenāit is a task. God will not complete you alone, but neither will you complete yourself without Him. The plural verb in Genesis 1:26 announces the terms of human existence: partnership or stagnation, collaboration or perpetual incompleteness.
This is why the creation of man required the plural “us.” Because from the very beginning, from the first moment of human existence, God established that we would not be passive recipients of existence but active participants in our own formation. He built incompleteness into our design. He made us creatures who must choose to become what we are meant to be.
The divine voice still speaks the same words that opened human history: “Let us make man.” The question is not whether God is willing to partner with us in this work. He declared His willingness before we drew our first breath. The question is whether we will accept the invitation, whether we will lift our hands to join in the work of our own transformation, whether we will dare to become fully human.
The invitation stands. The work waits. And the question that began human history remains unanswered until each of us decides: Will we accept the partnership God offers, or will we remain forever unfinished?
To learn more of Rabbi Pinchas Polonskyās insights on the Bible, orderĀ The Universal Torah: Growth & Struggle in the Five Books of Moses ā Genesis Part 1Ā today!
