Genesis 11:7

11:7 Come, let’s go down and confuse ¹  their language so they won’t be able to understand each other.” ² 

Genesis 41:17

41:17 Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, “In my dream I was standing ³  by the edge of the Nile.

[11:7]  ¹ 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]  ² tn Heb “they will not hear, a man the lip of his neighbor.”

[41:17]  ³ tn Heb “In my dream look, I was standing.” The use of the particle הִנֵּה (hinneh, “look”) here (and also in vv. 18, 19, 22, 23) invites the hearer (within the context of the narrative, Joseph; but in the broader sense the reader or hearer of the Book of Genesis) to observe the scene through Pharaoh’s eyes.