Gen 11:7-8 | NETfull | STEP | Come, let’s go down and confuse their language so they won’t be able to understand each other.”

Genesis 11:7-8

7 Come, let’s go down and confuse ^{▼▼ 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.} their language so they won’t be able to understand each other.” ^{▼▼ Heb “they will not hear, a man the lip of his neighbor.”}

8 So the Lord scattered them from there across the face of the entire earth, and they stopped building ^{▼▼ 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.} the city.