Genesis 6:14

6:14 Make ¹  for yourself an ark of cypress ²  wood. Make rooms in the ark, and cover ³  it with pitch inside and out.

Genesis 11:3

11:3 Then they said to one another, ⁴  “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” ⁵  (They had brick instead of stone and tar ⁶  instead of mortar.) ⁷ 

Genesis 14:10

14:10 Now the Valley of Siddim was full of tar pits. ⁸  When the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled, they fell into them, ⁹  but some survivors ¹⁰  fled to the hills. ¹¹ 

¹ sn The Hebrew verb is an imperative. A motif of this section is that Noah did as the Lord commanded him – he was obedient. That obedience had to come from faith in the word of the Lord. So the theme of obedience to God’s word is prominent in this prologue to the law.

² tn A transliteration of the Hebrew term yields “gopher (גֹּפֶר, gofer) wood” (so KJV, NAB, NASB). While the exact nature of the wood involved is uncertain (cf. NLT “resinous wood”), many modern translations render the Hebrew term as “cypress” (so NEB, NIV, NRSV).

³ tn The Hebrew term כָּפָר (kafar, “to cover, to smear” [= to caulk]) appears here in the Qal stem with its primary, nonmetaphorical meaning. The Piel form כִּפֶּר (kipper), which has the metaphorical meaning “to atone, to expiate, to pacify,” is used in Levitical texts (see HALOT 493-94 s.v. כפר). Some authorities regard the form in v. 14 as a homonym of the much more common Levitical term (see BDB 498 s.v. כָּפָר).

⁴ tn Heb “a man to his neighbor.” The Hebrew idiom may be translated “to each other” or “one to another.”

⁵ 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).

⁶ tn Or “bitumen” (cf. NEB, NRSV).

⁷ tn The disjunctive clause gives information parenthetical to the narrative.

⁸ tn Heb “Now the Valley of Siddim [was] pits, pits of tar.” This parenthetical disjunctive clause emphasizes the abundance of tar pits in the area through repetition of the noun “pits.”

⁹ tn Or “they were defeated there.” After a verb of motion the Hebrew particle שָׁם (sham) with the directional heh (שָׁמָּה, shammah) can mean “into it, therein” (BDB 1027 s.v. שָׁם).

¹⁰ tn Heb “the rest.”

¹¹ sn The reference to the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah must mean the kings along with their armies. Most of them were defeated in the valley, but some of them escaped to the hills.