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
tnHeb “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).