11:5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the people 1 had started 2 building.
18:33 The Lord went on his way 4 when he had finished speaking 5 to Abraham. Then Abraham returned home. 6
1 tn Heb “the sons of man.” The phrase is intended in this polemic to portray the builders as mere mortals, not the lesser deities that the Babylonians claimed built the city.
2 tn The Hebrew text simply has בָּנוּ (banu), but since v. 8 says they left off building the city, an ingressive idea (“had started building”) should be understood here.
3 tn Heb “And when he finished speaking with him, God went up from Abraham.” The sequence of pronouns and proper names has been modified in the translation for stylistic reasons.
4 tn Heb “And the
5 tn The infinitive construct (“speaking”) serves as the direct object of the verb “finished.”
6 tn Heb “to his place.”
7 tn Or “keep.”
8 tn Or “waiting for.”
9 tn Grk “unto eternal life.”
10 tn The participles in v. 20 have been variously interpreted. Some treat them imperativally or as attendant circumstance to the imperative in v. 21 (“maintain”): “build yourselves up…pray.” But they do not follow the normal contours of either the imperatival or attendant circumstance participles, rendering this unlikely. A better option is to treat them as the means by which the readers are to maintain themselves in the love of God. This both makes eminently good sense and fits the structural patterns of instrumental participles elsewhere.
11 tn Here δέ (de) has been translated as “At this point” to indicate the implied sequence of events within the narrative. “Then,” which is normally used to indicate this, would be redundant with the following clause.
12 sn They recognized him. Other than this cryptic remark, it is not told how the two disciples were now able to recognize Jesus.
13 tn This pronoun is somewhat emphatic.
14 tn This translates a καί (kai, “and”) that has clear sequential force.