Genesis 11:1-32

The Dispersion of the Nations at Babel

11:1 The whole earth ¹  had a common language and a common vocabulary. ²  11:2 When the people ³  moved eastward, ⁴  they found a plain in Shinar ⁵  and settled there. 11:3 Then they said to one another, ⁶  “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” ⁷  (They had brick instead of stone and tar ⁸  instead of mortar.) ⁹  11:4 Then they said, “Come, let’s build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens ¹⁰  so that ¹¹  we may make a name for ourselves. Otherwise ¹²  we will be scattered ¹³  across the face of the entire earth.”

11:5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the people ¹⁴  had started ¹⁵  building. 11:6 And the Lord said, “If as one people all sharing a common language ¹⁶  they have begun to do this, then ¹⁷  nothing they plan to do will be beyond them. ¹⁸  11:7 Come, let’s go down and confuse ¹⁹  their language so they won’t be able to understand each other.” ²⁰ 

11:8 So the Lord scattered them from there across the face of the entire earth, and they stopped building ²¹  the city. 11:9 That is why its name was called ²²  Babel ²³  – because there the Lord confused the language of the entire world, and from there the Lord scattered them across the face of the entire earth.

The Genealogy of Shem

11:10 This is the account of Shem.

Shem was 100 old when he became the father of Arphaxad, two years after the flood. 11:11 And after becoming the father of Arphaxad, Shem lived 500 years and had other ²⁴  sons and daughters.

11:12 When Arphaxad had lived 35 years, he became the father of Shelah. 11:13 And after he became the father of Shelah, Arphaxad lived 403 years and had other ²⁵  sons and daughters. ²⁶ 

11:14 When Shelah had lived 30 years, he became the father of Eber. 11:15 And after he became the father of Eber, Shelah lived 403 years and had other ²⁷  sons and daughters.

11:16 When Eber had lived 34 years, he became the father of Peleg. 11:17 And after he became the father of Peleg, Eber lived 430 years and had other sons and daughters.

11:18 When Peleg had lived 30 years, he became the father of Reu. 11:19 And after he became the father of Reu, Peleg lived 209 years and had other sons and daughters.

11:20 When Reu had lived 32 years, he became the father of Serug. 11:21 And after he became the father of Serug, Reu lived 207 years and had other sons and daughters.

11:22 When Serug had lived 30 years, he became the father of Nahor. 11:23 And after he became the father of Nahor, Serug lived 200 years and had other sons and daughters.

11:24 When Nahor had lived 29 years, he became the father of Terah. 11:25 And after he became the father of Terah, Nahor lived 119 years and had other sons and daughters.

11:26 When Terah had lived 70 years, he became the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran.

The Record of Terah

11:27 This is the account of Terah.

Terah became the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran. And Haran became the father of Lot. 11:28 Haran died in the land of his birth, in Ur of the Chaldeans, ²⁸  while his father Terah was still alive. ²⁹  11:29 And Abram and Nahor took wives for themselves. The name of Abram’s wife was Sarai, ³⁰  and the name of Nahor’s wife was Milcah; ³¹  she was the daughter of Haran, the father of both Milcah and Iscah. 11:30 But Sarai was barren; she had no children.

11:31 Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot (the son of Haran), and his daughter-in-law Sarai, his son Abram’s wife, and with them he set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan. When they came to Haran, they settled there. 11:32 The lifetime ³²  of Terah was 205 years, and he ³³  died in Haran.

Genesis 29:9-10

29:9 While he was still speaking with them, Rachel arrived with her father’s sheep, for she was tending them. ³⁴  29:10 When Jacob saw Rachel, the daughter of his uncle Laban, ³⁵  and the sheep of his uncle Laban, he ³⁶  went over ³⁷  and rolled the stone off the mouth of the well and watered the sheep of his uncle Laban. ³⁸ 

Exodus 2:16

2:16 Now a priest of Midian had seven daughters, and they came and began to draw ³⁹  water ⁴⁰  and fill ⁴¹  the troughs in order to water their father’s flock.

Jude 1:11

1:11 Woe to them! For they have traveled down Cain’s path, ⁴²  and because of greed ⁴³  have abandoned themselves ⁴⁴  to ⁴⁵  Balaam’s error; hence, ⁴⁶  they will certainly perish ⁴⁷  in Korah’s rebellion.

Jude 1:1

Salutation

1:1 From Jude, ⁴⁸  a slave ⁴⁹  of Jesus Christ and brother of James, ⁵⁰  to those who are called, wrapped in the love of ⁵¹  God the Father and kept for ⁵²  Jesus Christ.

Jude 1:11

1:11 Woe to them! For they have traveled down Cain’s path, ⁵³  and because of greed ⁵⁴  have abandoned themselves ⁵⁵  to ⁵⁶  Balaam’s error; hence, ⁵⁷  they will certainly perish ⁵⁸  in Korah’s rebellion.

John 4:7

4:7 A Samaritan woman ⁵⁹  came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me some water ⁶⁰  to drink.”

[11:1]  ¹ sn The whole earth. Here “earth” is a metonymy of subject, referring to the people who lived in the earth. Genesis 11 begins with everyone speaking a common language, but chap. 10 has the nations arranged by languages. It is part of the narrative art of Genesis to give the explanation of the event after the narration of the event. On this passage see A. P. Ross, “The Dispersion of the Nations in Genesis 11:1-9,” BSac 138 (1981): 119-38.

[11:1]  ² tn Heb “one lip and one [set of] words.” The term “lip” is a metonymy of cause, putting the instrument for the intended effect. They had one language. The term “words” refers to the content of their speech. They had the same vocabulary.

[11:2]  ³ tn Heb “they”; the referent (the people) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[11:2]  ⁴ tn Or perhaps “from the east” (NRSV) or “in the east.”

[11:2]  ⁵ tn Heb “in the land of Shinar.”

[11:3]  ⁶ tn Heb “a man to his neighbor.” The Hebrew idiom may be translated “to each other” or “one to another.”

[11:3]  ⁷ 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).

[11:3]  ⁸ tn Or “bitumen” (cf. NEB, NRSV).

[11:3]  ⁹ tn The disjunctive clause gives information parenthetical to the narrative.

[11:4]  ¹⁰ 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.

[11:4]  ¹¹ 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.

[11:4]  ¹² tn The Hebrew particle פֶּן (pen) expresses a negative purpose; it means “that we be not scattered.”

[11:4]  ¹³ 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.

[11:5]  ¹⁴ 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.

[11:5]  ¹⁵ 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.

[11:6]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “and one lip to all of them.”

[11:6]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “and now.” The foundational clause beginning with הֵן (hen) expresses the condition, and the second clause the result. It could be rendered “If this…then now.”

[11:6]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “all that they purpose to do will not be withheld from them.”

[11:7]  ¹⁹ 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.

[11:7]  ²⁰ tn Heb “they will not hear, a man the lip of his neighbor.”

[11:8]  ²¹ tn The infinitive construct לִבְנֹת (livnot, “building”) here serves as the object of the verb “they ceased, stopped,” answering the question of what they stopped doing.

[11:9]  ²² tn The verb has no expressed subject and so can be rendered as a passive in the translation.

[11:9]  ²³ sn Babel. Here is the climax of the account, a parody on the pride of Babylon. In the Babylonian literature the name bab-ili meant “the gate of God,” but in Hebrew it sounds like the word for “confusion,” and so retained that connotation. The name “Babel” (בָּבֶל, bavel) and the verb translated “confused” (בָּלַל, balal) form a paronomasia (sound play). For the many wordplays and other rhetorical devices in Genesis, see J. P. Fokkelman, Narrative Art in Genesis (SSN).

[11:11]  ²⁴ tn The word “other” is not in the Hebrew text, but is supplied for stylistic reasons.

[11:13]  ²⁵ tn The word “other” is not in the Hebrew text, but is supplied for stylistic reasons.

[11:13]  ²⁶ tc The reading of the MT is followed in vv. 11-12; the LXX reads, “And [= when] Arphaxad had lived thirty-five years, [and] he fathered [= became the father of] Cainan. And after he fathered [= became the father of] Cainan, Arphaxad lived four hundred and thirty years and fathered [= had] [other] sons and daughters, and [then] he died. And [= when] Cainan had lived one hundred and thirty years, [and] he fathered [= became the father of] Sala [= Shelah]. And after he fathered [= became the father of] Sala [= Shelah], Cainan lived three hundred and thirty years and fathered [= had] [other] sons and daughters, and [then] he died.” See also the note on “Shelah” in Gen 10:24; the LXX reading also appears to lie behind Luke 3:35-36.

[11:15]  ²⁷ tn Here and in vv. 16, 19, 21, 23, 25 the word “other” is not in the Hebrew text, but is supplied for stylistic reasons.

[11:28]  ²⁸ sn The phrase of the Chaldeans is a later editorial clarification for the readers, designating the location of Ur. From all evidence there would have been no Chaldeans in existence at this early date; they are known in the time of the neo-Babylonian empire in the first millennium b.c.

[11:28]  ²⁹ tn Heb “upon the face of Terah his father.”

[11:29]  ³⁰ sn The name Sarai (a variant spelling of “Sarah”) means “princess” (or “lady”). Sharratu was the name of the wife of the moon god Sin. The original name may reflect the culture out of which the patriarch was called, for the family did worship other gods in Mesopotamia.

[11:29]  ³¹ sn The name Milcah means “Queen.” But more to the point here is the fact that Malkatu was a title for Ishtar, the daughter of the moon god. If the women were named after such titles (and there is no evidence that this was the motivation for naming the girls “Princess” or “Queen”), that would not necessarily imply anything about the faith of the two women themselves.

[11:32]  ³² tn Heb “And the days of Terah were.”

[11:32]  ³³ tn Heb “Terah”; the pronoun has been substituted for the proper name in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[29:9]  ³⁴ tn Heb “was a shepherdess.”

[29:10]  ³⁵ tn Heb “Laban, the brother of his mother” (twice in this verse).

[29:10]  ³⁶ tn Heb “Jacob.” The proper name has been replaced by the pronoun (“he”) in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[29:10]  ³⁷ tn Heb “drew near, approached.”

[29:10]  ³⁸ tn Heb “Laban, the brother of his mother.” The text says nothing initially about the beauty of Rachel. But the reader is struck by the repetition of “Laban the brother of his mother.” G. J. Wenham is no doubt correct when he observes that Jacob’s primary motive at this stage is to ingratiate himself with Laban (Genesis [WBC], 2:231).

[2:16]  ³⁹ tn The preterites describing their actions must be taken in an ingressive sense, since they did not actually complete the job. Shepherds drove them away, and Moses watered the flocks.

[2:16]  ⁴⁰ tn The object “water” is not in the Hebrew text, but is implied.

[2:16]  ⁴¹ tn This also has the ingressive sense, “began to fill,” but for stylistic reasons is translated simply “fill” here.

[1:11]  ⁴² tn Or “they have gone the way of Cain.”

[1:11]  ⁴³ tn Grk “for wages.”

[1:11]  ⁴⁴ tn The verb ἐκχέω (ekcew) normally means “pour out.” Here, in the passive, it occasionally has a reflexive idea, as BDAG 312 s.v. 3. suggests (with extra-biblical examples).

[1:11]  ⁴⁵ tn Or “in.”

[1:11]  ⁴⁶ tn Grk “and.” See note on “perish” later in this verse.

[1:11]  ⁴⁷ tn The three verbs in this verse are all aorist indicative (“have gone down,” “have abandoned,” “have perished”). Although the first and second could be considered constative or ingressive, the last is almost surely proleptic (referring to the certainty of their future judgment). Although it may seem odd that a proleptic aorist is so casually connected to other aorists with a different syntactical force, it is not unparalleled (cf. Rom 8:30).

[1:1]  ⁴⁸ tn Grk “Judas,” traditionally “Jude” in English versions to distinguish him from the one who betrayed Jesus. The word “From” is not in the Greek text, but has been supplied to indicate the sender of the letter.

[1:1]  ⁴⁹ tn Though δοῦλος (doulos) is normally translated “servant,” the word does not bear the connotation of a free individual serving another. BDAG notes that “‘servant’ for ‘slave’ is largely confined to Biblical transl. and early American times…in normal usage at the present time the two words are carefully distinguished” (BDAG 260 s.v.). At the same time, perhaps “servant” is apt in that the δοῦλος of Jesus Christ took on that role voluntarily, unlike a slave. The most accurate translation is “bondservant” (sometimes found in the ASV for δοῦλος), in that it often indicates one who sells himself into slavery to another. But as this is archaic, few today understand its force.

[1:1]  ⁵⁰ sn Although Jude was half-brother of Jesus, he humbly associates himself with James, his full brother. By first calling himself a slave of Jesus Christ, it is evident that he wants no one to place stock in his physical connections. At the same time, he must identify himself further: Since Jude was a common name in the 1st century (two of Jesus’ disciples were so named, including his betrayer), more information was needed, that is to say, brother of James.

[1:1]  ⁵¹ tn Grk “loved in.” The perfect passive participle suggests that the audience’s relationship to God is not recent; the preposition ἐν (en) before πατρί (patri) could be taken as sphere or instrument (agency is unlikely, however). Another possible translation would be “dear to God.”

[1:1]  ⁵² tn Or “by.” Datives of agency are quite rare in the NT (and other ancient Greek), almost always found with a perfect verb. Although this text qualifies, in light of the well-worn idiom of τηρέω (threw) in eschatological contexts, in which God or Christ keeps the believer safe until the parousia (cf. 1 Thess 5:23; 1 Pet 1:4; Rev 3:10; other terms meaning “to guard,” “to keep” are also found in similar eschatological contexts [cf. 2 Thess 3:3; 2 Tim 1:12; 1 Pet 1:5; Jude 24]), it is probably better to understand this verse as having such an eschatological tinge. It is at the same time possible that Jude’s language was intentionally ambiguous, implying both ideas (“kept by Jesus Christ [so that they might be] kept for Jesus Christ”). Elsewhere he displays a certain fondness for wordplays; this may be a hint of things to come.

[1:11]  ⁵³ tn Or “they have gone the way of Cain.”

[1:11]  ⁵⁴ tn Grk “for wages.”

[1:11]  ⁵⁵ tn The verb ἐκχέω (ekcew) normally means “pour out.” Here, in the passive, it occasionally has a reflexive idea, as BDAG 312 s.v. 3. suggests (with extra-biblical examples).

[1:11]  ⁵⁶ tn Or “in.”

[1:11]  ⁵⁷ tn Grk “and.” See note on “perish” later in this verse.

[1:11]  ⁵⁸ tn The three verbs in this verse are all aorist indicative (“have gone down,” “have abandoned,” “have perished”). Although the first and second could be considered constative or ingressive, the last is almost surely proleptic (referring to the certainty of their future judgment). Although it may seem odd that a proleptic aorist is so casually connected to other aorists with a different syntactical force, it is not unparalleled (cf. Rom 8:30).

[4:7]  ⁵⁹ tn Grk “a woman from Samaria.” According to BDAG 912 s.v. Σαμάρεια, the prepositional phrase is to be translated as a simple attributive: “γυνὴ ἐκ τῆς Σαμαρείας a Samaritan woman J 4:7.”

[4:7]  ⁶⁰ tn The phrase “some water” is supplied as the understood direct object of the infinitive πεῖν (pein).