7
Come,הָבָהlet us go downנֵרְדָהand confuseוְנָבְלָהtheir languageשְׂפָתָםthere,שָׁםso thatאֲשֶׁרno oneלֹא אִישׁwill understandיִשְׁמְעוּthe languageשְׂפַתof his neighbor.”רֵעֵהוּ
Genesis 11:7
Study it in the app“Come, let us go down and confuse their language there, so that no one will understand the language of his neighbor.””
With the Hebrew beneath
Genesis 11:7, word by word
- Comeהָבָhava
come on
An invitation to act together: «come on!, let us!».
Where else “hava” appears- let us go downנֵרְדָהnerda
go down
To go from a higher place to a lower one, like from the mountain to the valley.
Where else “nerda” appears- and confuseנָבְלָהnavla
confuse
To mix up people's speech so that they cannot understand one another.
Where else “navla” appears- their languageשְׂפָתָsefata
language
The tongue proper to a people, the language it speaks.
Where else “sefata” appears- no oneאִישׁish
each
Literally "a man": any person; with "not", not a single person.
Where else “ish” appears- will understandיִשְׁמְעוּyishmu
listen
To pay close attention, or heed a plea.
Where else “yishmu” appears- of his neighborרֵעֵree
neighbor
The person living near, anyone one deals with.
Where else “ree” appears
Translation note
As in Genesis 1:26, the Hebrew uses the plural here (“let us go down,” “let us confuse”) and does not explain why. In the next verse the verb is singular: “YHWH scattered them.”
The context
6And YHWH said, “Look, they are one people, and they all have one language, and this is what they have begun to do; and now nothing that they plan to do will be out of reach for them.
7 · This verse (above)
8So YHWH scattered them from there over the face of all the earth, and they stopped building the city.
To study Genesis 11 in a group
1. What it says
What did the people in the land of Shinar say as they built their city and tower (vv. 3-4)?
2. What it means
Why did YHWH confuse their language and scatter them over the whole earth (vv. 6-9)?
3. How I live it
In what you are planning, what is for making a name for yourself, and what is for serving others?