Does God Speak in the Royal We? (Genesis 1:26)

In Genesis 1:26, God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” It is sometimes suggested that God was using the plural of excellence, or the “royal we”. In some cultures, monarchs and officials speak of themselves in the plural rather than in the singular. So, the argument goes that God was using the “royal we” in the same way that Queen Victoria is famously quoted as saying, “We are not amused.”

However, Queen Victoria would not be amused at this argument. There was no such thing as the “royal we” in Classical Hebrew because the plural of excellence was not used with verbs. Rather, the plural of excellence applies only to nouns such as the Hebrew word for “God”. The original readers of Genesis 1:26 would not have thought that God was speaking in the “royal we”, since such a feature simply did not exist in their language. Throughout the Jewish Scriptures (Old Testament), monarchs, officials, and even God himself consistently speak in the singular.

Therefore, it is more reasonable that when God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness,” he was speaking to other persons beside himself.