Genesis 11:3

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 tar8 instead of mortar.)9

6	tn Heb “a man to his neighbor.” The Hebrew idiom may be translated “to each other” or “one to another.”
7	tn The speech contains two cohortatives of exhortation followed by their respective cognate accusatives: “let us brick bricks” (נִלְבְּנָה לְבֵנִים, nilbbénah lévenim) and “burn for burning” (נִשְׂרְפָה לִשְׂרֵפָה, nisréfah 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).
8	tn Or “bitumen” (cf. NEB, NRSV).
9	tn The disjunctive clause gives information parenthetical to the narrative.