Na'aseh: The Only Thing God Paused to Talk Over 🌙

Dear friend on Monday evening,

There is a particular loneliness in feeling like an afterthought: the one added to the plans late, the child who was a surprise, the name someone has to be reminded of. Don asked for Genesis 1:26, and it says something about how you were made that answers that feeling at the root.

"And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." (Genesis 1:26)

🌟 Hebrew Focus

Read Genesis 1 out loud and listen to the rhythm. "Let there be light." "Let there be a firmament." "Let the earth bring forth grass." "Let the waters bring forth." Again and again God speaks, and things appear. Then, at verse 26, the rhythm breaks: נַעֲשֶׂה אָדָם בְּצַלְמֵנוּ כִּדְמוּתֵנוּ, na'aseh adam betzalmenu kidmutenu, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness."

Na'aseh, נַעֲשֶׂה, is from asah, עָשָׂה, to make, to do. The form is first person plural: "let us make." It is the first time in the Bible God speaks this way, and readers have asked "who is the us?" for as long as the verse has been read. There are three classic answers, and each is worth knowing.

Many Jewish interpreters hear God addressing his heavenly court, as in Isaiah 6:8, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" Rashi saw humility in it: the Creator consulting before he made the one creature who would bear his image. Others read a plural of majesty or of deliberation, the way a person says "let's see" when thinking something through. And from the earliest centuries Christians have heard the Father speaking with the Son and the Spirit, the Word through whom "all things were made" (John 1:3).

Then notice what verse 27 does: "So God created man in his own image." The verb there, vayivra, is singular. The deliberation lands in one act. Whichever way you read the "us," every reading agrees on this much: you were not an afterthought. Humanity is the one thing in Genesis 1 that God paused over, and then made, on purpose, in his image.

🔍 Beginner Hebrew

• ‎נַעֲשֶׂה · na'aseh · let us make (Genesis 1:26) · H6213
• ‎עָשָׂה · asah · to make, to do (the root) · H6213
• ‎אָדָם · adam · humankind (we've met this) · H120
• ‎צֶלֶם · tzelem · image (we've met this) · H6754
• ‎דְּמוּת · demut · likeness (we've met this) · H1823

📖 The Pattern

The rhythm breaks. Everything else in Genesis 1 comes with "let there be" or "let the earth bring forth." Humanity comes with na'aseh, "let us make" (Genesis 1:26).

Three ways to hear the "us." God and his heavenly court (Isaiah 6:8; compare Genesis 3:22 and 11:7), a plural of majesty or deliberation, or the Father with the Son and the Spirit (John 1:3; Colossians 1:16).

One act, on purpose. Verse 27 turns singular: "So God created man in his own image... male and female created he them." Deliberated over, then made.

🛤️ Practice

1. Name where you feel like an afterthought: a family, a church, a workplace, a friendship.
2. Read Genesis 1:24-27 aloud and listen for the moment the rhythm changes.
3. Say na'aseh slowly. Let it stand for the fact that you were deliberated over.
4. Tonight's worksheet walks the "afterthought" story you carry into the one Genesis tells.

🎯 Reflection & Prayer

Father, I have felt like an afterthought: added late, made by accident, tolerated more than wanted.

But when you made the stars, you simply spoke. When you made us, you said, let us make. You made us in your image, on purpose, male and female, and called it very good.

Tonight I set down the story that I was an accident and pick up the one you wrote. I was deliberated over, and made. Amen.

🗣️ Transliteration & Pronunciation

The word is na'aseh (nah-ah-SEH), נַעֲשֶׂה, let us make, from asah (ah-SAH), to make. The phrase is na'aseh adam betzalmenu (nah-ah-SEH ah-DAHM beh-tsahl-MEH-noo), "let us make man in our image." The small catch in the middle of na'aseh is the letter ayin. Genesis 1:26.

💛 Thank you, Don, for Genesis 1:26, one of the most argued-over verses in the Bible, and for letting us sit in what every reading of it agrees on. And thank you for reading. These notes stay free because readers pass them on, so if someone you love has felt like an afterthought, send them this.

Say it once, slowly: na'aseh, let us make. Tomorrow morning, Exodus 31, and the first person in the Bible said to be filled with the Spirit of God: a craftsman named Bezalel. See you then.