Why Does Genesis say "Let us make man?"

GENESIS 1:26-27

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

So God created man in his own image,

in the image of God he created him;

male and female he created them.

SOME POINTS TO MAKE ABOUT THIS PASSAGE

1  This last half of the passage is marked off as poetry by the NIV interpreters.  There is a lot of poetry throughout the Bible, and when the modern interpreters discover it, they put poetry in stanzas to identify the verses as such.
2.  The word "man" is Adam in Hebrew.  In other words, Adam is a man's name and it is also the Hebrew word used to define all of humankind.  So, Genesis is telling us that Adam represents all of humankind.

3.  Adam (humankind - not the individual) is made male and female.

4.  The image of God is male and female.

WHO WAS GOD WITH WHEN HE SAID, "LET US MAKE... IN OUR IMAGE?"

1.  Some (including Mormons) have suggested that this verse implies that God has a wife, but there is no other place in the Bible that even suggests that possiblilbity that God is married.  A few people believe that the asherah were God's wives/concubines during certain eras in Israel.  The Asherah were probably imported from other local tribes and nations that worshiped them.  But the prophets of the Bible universally condemned the worship or the continuence of these gods.  It is highly unlikely that generations of biblical prophets and priests in Israel would permit Genesis 1 to remain if they believed that it suggested that God had a wife that helped create the world.

2.  Many suggest that "let us..." is evidence of the trinity, but the beginnings of understanding the trinity began shortly after Jesus' death and took hundreds of years to nail down.  As good as it sounds theologically, the context of Genesis and the tme this was written does not suggest the trinity in any way.  Besides, nowhere else in the Bible does God talk among his 3 distinct natures in this way.

3.  Others suggest that Genesis 1 is an old story (mythological in nature) that passed down by word of mouth in Israel, and "us" refers to several gods who were creating in this story.   Who these gods were, I have no idea, but we do know from archeology and from the Bible that Israel worshiped many gods during its long history.  According to this point of view then, the creation story in Genesis 1 developed during a time when Israel believed in multiple gods, however, held God as first among these gods.

4.  God may be talking about Himself and his angels.  The context of Genesis best serves this view.  Genesis is filled with angelic manifestations; and when the Lord visited Abraham, he went with two angels.  Hebrew traditions state that an angel was active in setting up Israel's Law, so in the Ancient Hebrew worldview, it is entirely possible that angels were involved in creation as well.

The worldview of Genesis 1 is so much different than ours today.  Consider these:
a.  It is very likely that the "sons of God" mentioned in Genesis 6 were some type of angelic beings that we don't even have classifications for today.
b.  When people built the tower of Babylon, they thought they could reach heaven.  I believe they thought they could reach the dwelling place of the angels mentioned later on in Jacob's dream (Genesis 28:12).
c.  In Genesis 28, when Jacob dreamed of heaven, the angels of God were ascending and descending on a ladder that reached heaven where angels lived.

The world according to Genesis was filled with angels and other heavenly beings that moved among us working God's will.  I would argue then, that God was with the angels and other spiritual beings (perhaps the sons of God mentioned in Genesis 6) when He said, "Let us make Adam in our likeness...."