Why does God refer to Himself in the plural in Genesis 1:26 and 3:22?
Now I have all I need. Let me compose the answer.
The plural in Genesis 1:26 ("Let us make man in our image") and Genesis 3:22 ("the man is become as one of us") has occupied careful readers of Scripture for centuries. The answer lies deep in the grammar of the divine name itself, and in the unprecedented solemnity God attaches to the creation of man.
Elohim: A Plural Name With a Singular Verb
A. Pollock opens the argument at the very foundation — the Hebrew name for God:
A. PollockThe word, GOD (Elohim), is found over 2,500 times in the plural, and only a little over 300 times in the singular. In the light of the full teaching of Scripture we can plainly see that the thought of the Trinity is therein enshrined. This is further emphasized by the fact that the verb that follows the word GOD (plural) in Genesis 1:1 — "GOD created" — is in the singular. This is very unusual to say the least. But if the plural form of the word, GOD sets forth a plural-unity, we can understand the plural word for GOD being followed by a singular verb.
So from the very first verse of the Bible, the grammar is doing something extraordinary: a plural subject, a singular verb. Pollock connects this directly to the Shema:
"Hear, O Israel: The Lord [Jehovah, singular] our God [Elohim, plural] is one Lord [Jehovah, singular]" (Deut. 6:4). Here in the very affirmation of the unity of the Godhead, there is emphasized the truth of the Trinity, Three in One and One in Three — one God.
This is not polytheism. It is what the same author calls a plural-unity — which is precisely what the Christian doctrine of the Trinity affirms.
"Let Us Make Man": Intra-Trinitarian Counsel
William Kelly observes that Genesis 1:26 marks a decisive break in the narrative. Throughout the creation account, God simply commands — "Let there be light," "Let the waters bring forth." But when it comes to man, something changes:
William KellyNot only is man introduced with marked separateness from the previous creation of animals, even from those of the earth made on the same day, each "after its kind," and all seen as "good," but for the first time God enters into counsel with Himself for this great and absolutely new work. It is no longer "Let there be," or "Let the earth (or 'the waters') bring forth" ... Here the language rises into appropriate grandeur and solemnity, "Let us make men."
The plural here is not accidental or rhetorical. It discloses the inner life of the Godhead — Father, Son, and Spirit, each distinct in person, deliberating together in creating the one creature who would bear their image.
The author of the essay on the Eternal Son makes the structure explicit:
In the Hebrew the Name for God is in the plural and the verb in the singular. "In the beginning God (plural) created (singular)" thus showing plurality in unity. And in Gen. 1:26 we read, "And God said, Let us make man in our image." Here clearly plurality is revealed, each distinct in personality so that they can address one another, "Let us make man," and yet having one likeness and working together in concert to carry out one purpose, neither acting without the other.
A. Pollock in his treatment of the divine names draws the doctrinal conclusion plainly:
A. PollockWhy, then, we may ask, is God introduced to us as Elohim, a plural word? As we read through God's holy Word we find He is revealed as Father, Son and Spirit... "Let US [plural] make man in our image, after our likeness" (Gen. 1:26). These Three Persons, of one Substance, completely united in thought, will, purpose, counsel, are not three Gods, but One God, not a tritheism, but a Holy Trinity.
"One of Us": Genesis 3:22 and the Knowledge of Good and Evil
The plural reappears after the Fall — and here William Kelly provides the most illuminating commentary. After Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, God says: "Behold, the man is become as one of us to know good and evil" (Gen. 3:22). What does this mean?
Kelly explains what it means for God to "know good and evil," as distinct from how fallen man now knows it:
William KellyBy the fall man got the knowledge of good and evil, that is, the intrinsic perception of right and wrong apart from prescription; or as Jehovah Elohim said (Gen. 3:22), "Behold, the man is become as one of us to know good and evil!" ... God knew good and evil as One unassailable by evil and supremely above it in His own nature: man only acquired it by sin and in subjection to the power of evil, and thus having it now in himself.
So the comparison in Genesis 3:22 is not flattery. The Triune God ("one of us") knows good and evil from a position of absolute holiness, untouched by it. Man has gained a similar discernment — but acquired through transgression, now living within the very evil he can perceive. The words carry an edge of solemn irony: man reached for a divine prerogative, and obtained something that looks like it from the outside, but is experienced entirely differently from within a fallen nature.
Synthesis
Both passages point to the same reality. The plural in Genesis 1:26 reveals the intra-Trinitarian counsel by which man — uniquely among all creatures — was made to bear the image of a God who is himself a community of Persons. The plural in Genesis 3:22 confirms that same plurality of Persons in God ("one of us"), this time as the backdrop against which the tragic irony of the Fall is measured: man grasped at divine knowledge, and got it — but shattered.
The Hebrew grammar, as Pollock notes, was not a guess by Moses. A plural name, a singular verb, a plural pronoun, a singular purpose: these are the fingerprints of a Trinity acting in perfect concert — the truth "clearly latent in the Old Testament," as he puts it, and fully disclosed in the New.