The word "Please" (אָנָּא) appears very few times in Torah. I can only find one place where it appears twice in the same verses and that is in Genesis 50 concerning Joseph forgiving his brothers transgressions.
In Genesis 50:17 – Joseph's brothers plead through a messenger: "אָ֣נָּ֡א שָׂ֣א נָ֠א פֶּשַׁ֨ע אַחֶ֜יךָ"
"Please forgive, I beg you, the transgression of your brothers". This frames post-Joseph reconciliation, echoing covenant mercy amid fear of retribution.
Genesis 50:15-17 (ESV) reads—When Joseph's brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, “It may be that Joseph will hate us and pay us back for all the evil that we did to him.” So they sent a message to Joseph, saying, “Your father gave this command before he died: ‘Say to Joseph, “Please (אָנָּא) forgive the transgression of your brothers and their sin, because they did evil to you.”’ And now, please (אָנָּא) forgive the transgression of the servants of the God of your father.” Joseph wept when they spoke to him.
Genesis 50:17 is the only verse in the entire Torah where אָנָּא appears twice, creating an emphatic double plea for forgiveness: "אָ֣נָּ֡א שָׂ֣א נָ֠א פֶּשַׁ֨ע אַחֶ֜יךָ ... וְעַתָּה֙ שָׂ֣א נָ֔א" ("Please forgive now the transgression of your brothers... and now, please forgive"). The rarity amplifies Genesis 50:17's role as Torah's sole "double please," underscores Torah's climactic moment of familial reconciliation and forgiveness.
One other rare use of the word "Please" in the first five books of Moses is in Exodus.
In Exodus 32:31-34 after the Israelites made the golden calf, "Moses returned to the Lord and said: "Please!" (אָנָּא)
"This people has committed a grave sin. They have made themselves a god of gold." And Moses stood before the Lord and wanted Him to "forgive their sin."
The Lord told Moses "Whoever has sinned against Me, him I will erase from My book!"
Then the Lord told Moses to "lead the people to [the place] of which I have spoken to you."
The Lord told Moses that "on the day I make an accounting [of sins upon them], I will bring their sin to account against them."
The Lord did not agree to cancel the accounting of sins promised in Exodus 32:34 ("But on the day when I make an accounting, I will bring their sin to account against them"). Instead, God affirmed individual responsibility: "Whoever has sinned against Me, him will I blot out of My book" (Exod 32:33), while sending a plague as immediate judgment (Exod 32:35).
God's Response to Moses' Plea -- Moses' אָנָּא plea (Exod 32:31-32) secured national survival and covenant renewal (Exod 34:10), with God relenting from total destruction (Exod 32:14).
Yet the sin-accounting vow stands firm—foreshadowing generational consequences like wilderness wandering (Num 14) and later exiles.
The second tablets and renewed Torah (Exod 34) and restored relationship, but verse 7 declares God's character: "forgiving iniquity... yet by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children."
No explicit revocation occurs; later texts (Deut 7:9-10; Num 14:18) echo this principle of delayed but inevitable reckoning. Thus, mercy delays full accounting, but divine justice ensures sin's consequences ripple through history, balanced by repen⁸tance opportunities. There is ongoing sin and repeat visitations. The Lord tries over and over to gather the people he chose.
David gave us hope of the Messiah. In Psalm 116:3-4 When bands of death surrounded [David] and the boundaries of the grave befell [him], and [David] found trouble and grief, [David] called out in the name of the Lord, "Please (אָנָּא), O Lord, save my soul!
David begged the Lord for salvation.
The first use of אָנָּא in the Prophets appears in 2 Kings 20:3 (paralleled in Isaiah 38:3), where King Hezekiah prays desperately during his terminal illness: "אָנָּ֤ה יְהוָה֙ זְכָר־נָ֣א אֵֽת־אֲשֶׁ֣ר הִתְהַלַּכְתִּ֗י לְפָנֶ֙יךָ֙ בֶּאֱמֶ֣ת וּבְלֵבָ֣ב שָׁלֵ֔ם" ("Please, O YHWH, remember now how I have walked before You in truth and with a perfect heart").
Isaiah 38:3 parallels 2 Kings 20:3 exactly, preserving Hezekiah's desperate אָנָּא plea on his deathbed: "אָנָּ֤ה יְהוָה֙ זְכָר־נָ֣א אֵֽת־אֲשֶׁ֣ר הִתְהַלַּכְתִּ֗י לְפָנֶ֙יךָ֙ בֶּאֱמֶ֣ת וּבְלֵבָ֣ב שָׁלֵ֔ם וְהַעֲשֹׂ֥תִי הַטּ֖וֹב בְּעֵינֶ֑יךָ" ("Please, O YHWH, remember now how I have walked before You in truth and with a perfect heart, and have done what is good in Your sight").
This double tradition (Kings/Isaiah) underscores the prayer's covenant weight: life's merit appealed amid judgment, answered by YHWH. as "God of David your father."
Melachim II (II Kings) - Chapter 20:5—Return and say to Hezekiah the ruler of My people, 'So has the Lord God of your father David said, "I have heard your prayer; I have seen your tears. Behold I shall heal you. On the third day you shall go up to the house of the Lord.
PLEASE is rare and important in the bible. Perhaps the book of Jonah offers a clue as to why.
In Jonah 1:14-15 as the sea and the sailors feared for their lives, the sailors called to the Lord and said, "Please (אָנָּא), O Lord, let us not perish for the life of this man, and do not place upon us innocent blood, for You, O Lord, as You wish, You have done." Then "they picked Jonah up and cast him into the sea, and the sea ceased storming."
16 Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows.
In Jonah 2, "After Jonah remembered the Lord and Jonah's prayer reached Hashem and His Holy Temple."
מְשַׁמְּרִ֖ים הַבְלֵי־שָׁ֑וְא חַסְדָּ֖ם יַֽעֲזֹֽבוּ
J̌onah realized 2.9—Those who keep worthless futilities abandon their kindness (חַסְדָּ֖ם-chesed).
So Jonah 2.10 "with a voice of thanks will I sacrifice to You; what I vowed I will pay, for the salvation of the Lord.
Jonah proclaimed "Salvation is of God."
Then, in the next verse—"And the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land."
Jonah, knowing he was the sinner, offered up his life to save the lives of the sailors (the salt). And the sailors, being the salt that they were, didn't want to be responsible for the death of an innocent man. They didn't cheer for his death. Instead, they offered sacrafices after his death and swore oaths to "the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.”
I find the Hebrew letters in the word אָנָּא revealing.
אָ - Aleph (1) is symbolic of strength and God
נָּ - Nun (50) is symbolic of a seed. 50, Pentecost, is Jubilee.
א - Aleph (1) is symbolic of strength and God
Closing
Please (אָנָּא) Lord spare my family, Psalm 25:11: "For Your name's sake, O YHWH, pardon my iniquity."
Nehemiah 1:11—I beseech (אָנָּא) You, O Lord, may Your ear now be attentive to the prayer of Your servant and to the prayer of Your servants, who wish to fear Your name, and cause Your servant to succeed today, and grant him mercy before this man." And I was the king's butler.
I prayer I do not abandon חַסְדָּ֖ם-chesed (loving kindness).
Finally, a good parent also teaches their children to say, "thank you!"
