Genesis 11:3-4

11:3 Then they said to one another, ¹  “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” ²  (They had brick instead of stone and tar ³  instead of mortar.) ⁴  11:4 Then they said, “Come, let’s build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens ⁵  so that ⁶  we may make a name for ourselves. Otherwise ⁷  we will be scattered ⁸  across the face of the entire earth.”

Genesis 11:7

11:7 Come, let’s go down and confuse ⁹  their language so they won’t be able to understand each other.” ¹⁰ 

Genesis 11:2

11:2 When the people ¹¹  moved eastward, ¹²  they found a plain in Shinar ¹³  and settled there.

Genesis 5:5

5:5 The entire lifetime ¹⁴  of Adam was 930 years, and then he died. ¹⁵ 

Isaiah 5:5

5:5 Now I will inform you

what I am about to do to my vineyard:

I will remove its hedge and turn it into pasture, ¹⁶ 

I will break its wall and allow animals to graze there. ¹⁷ 

James 4:13

4:13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into this or that town ¹⁸  and spend a year there and do business and make a profit.”

James 5:1

Warning to the Rich

5:1 Come now, you rich! Weep and cry aloud ¹⁹  over the miseries that are coming on you.

¹ tn Heb “a man to his neighbor.” The Hebrew idiom may be translated “to each other” or “one to another.”

² tn The speech contains two cohortatives of exhortation followed by their respective cognate accusatives: “let us brick bricks” (נִלְבְּנָה לְבֵנִים, nilbbÿnah lÿvenim) and “burn for burning” (נִשְׂרְפָה לִשְׂרֵפָה, nisrÿfah lisrefah). This stresses the intensity of the undertaking; it also reflects the Akkadian text which uses similar constructions (see E. A. Speiser, Genesis [AB], 75-76).

³ tn Or “bitumen” (cf. NEB, NRSV).

⁴ tn The disjunctive clause gives information parenthetical to the narrative.

⁵ tn A translation of “heavens” for שָׁמַיִם (shamayim) fits this context because the Babylonian ziggurats had temples at the top, suggesting they reached to the heavens, the dwelling place of the gods.

⁶ tn The form וְנַעֲשֶׂה (vÿna’aseh, from the verb עשׂה, “do, make”) could be either the imperfect or the cohortative with a vav (ו) conjunction (“and let us make…”). Coming after the previous cohortative, this form expresses purpose.

⁷ tn The Hebrew particle פֶּן (pen) expresses a negative purpose; it means “that we be not scattered.”

⁸ sn The Hebrew verb פָּוָץ (pavats, translated “scatter”) is a key term in this passage. The focal point of the account is the dispersion (“scattering”) of the nations rather than the Tower of Babel. But the passage also forms a polemic against Babylon, the pride of the east and a cosmopolitan center with a huge ziggurat. To the Hebrews it was a monument to the judgment of God on pride.

⁹ tn The cohortatives mirror the cohortatives of the people. They build to ascend the heavens; God comes down to destroy their language. God speaks here to his angelic assembly. See the notes on the word “make” in 1:26 and “know” in 3:5, as well as Jub. 10:22-23, where an angel recounts this incident and says “And the Lord our God said to us…. And the Lord went down and we went down with him. And we saw the city and the tower which the sons of men built.” On the chiastic structure of the story, see G. J. Wenham, Genesis (WBC), 1:235.

¹⁰ tn Heb “they will not hear, a man the lip of his neighbor.”

¹¹ tn Heb “they”; the referent (the people) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

¹² tn Or perhaps “from the east” (NRSV) or “in the east.”

¹³ tn Heb “in the land of Shinar.”

¹⁴ tn Heb “all the days of Adam which he lived”

¹⁵ sn The genealogy traces the line from Adam to Noah and forms a bridge between the earlier accounts and the flood story. Its constant theme of the reign of death in the human race is broken once with the account of Enoch, but the genealogy ends with hope for the future through Noah. See further G. F. Hasel, “The Genealogies of Gen. 5 and 11 and their Alleged Babylonian Background,” AUSS 16 (1978): 361-74; idem, “Genesis 5 and 11,” Origins 7 (1980): 23-37.

¹⁶ tn Heb “and it will become [a place for] grazing.” בָּעַר (ba’ar, “grazing”) is a homonym of the more often used verb “to burn.”

¹⁷ tn Heb “and it will become a trampled place” (NASB “trampled ground”).

¹⁸ tn Or “city.”

¹⁹ tn Or “wail”; Grk “crying aloud.”