^11:3Then 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

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Footnotes

6 Heb “a man to his neighbor.” The Hebrew idiom may be translated “to each other” or “one to another.”
7 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 [], ).
8 Or “bitumen” (cf. , ).
9 The disjunctive clause gives information parenthetical to the narrative.

In other versions

ESVEnglish Standard Version

And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar.

NIVNew International Version (2011)

They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar.

CSBChristian Standard Bible

They said to each other, “Come, let’s make oven-fired bricks.” (They used brick for stone and asphalt for mortar.)

NLTNew Living Translation

They began saying to each other, “Let’s make bricks and harden them with fire.” (In this region bricks were used instead of stone, and tar was used for mortar.)

LEBThe Lexham English Bible

And they said to each other, “Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone and they had tar for mortar.

KJV 1900King James Version

And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter.

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