to descend (literally · conjunction + verb, qal sequential imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular
see
לִרְאֹ֥תlir.'Ot
H7200
to see · preposition + verb, qal infinitive construct
city
הָעִ֖ירha.'Ir
H5892
a city (a place guarded by waking or a watch) in the wi… · definite article + noun, common feminine singular absolute
tower
הַמִּגְדָּ֑לha.mig.Dal
H4026
a tower (from its size or height) · definite article + noun, common masculine singular absolute
children
בְּנֵ֥יbe.Nei
H1121
a son (as a builder of the family name) · noun, common masculine plural construct
men
הָאָדָֽםha.'a.Dam
H120
ruddy i.e. a human being (an individual or the species · definite article + noun, common masculine singular absolute
builded
בָּנ֖וּba.Nu
H1129
to build (literally and figuratively) · verb, qal perfect, 3rd person common plural
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Psalms 33:13-14 The LORD looketh from heaven; he beholdeth all the sons of men.
Genesis 18:21 I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me; and if not, I will know.
John 3:13 And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven.
Jeremiah 23:23-24 Am I a God at hand, saith the LORD, and not a God afar off?
Hebrews 4:13 Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have…
Exodus 19:11 And be ready against the third day: for the third day the LORD will come down in the sight of all the people upon mount Sinai.
Exodus 19:20 And the LORD came down upon mount Sinai, on the top of the mount: and the LORD called Moses up to the top of the mount; and Moses went up.
Psalms 11:4 The LORD is in his holy temple, the LORD’s throne is in heaven: his eyes behold, his eyelids try, the children of men.
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Genesis 11:5-9
We have here the quashing of the project of the Babel-builders, and the turning of the counsel of those froward men headlong, that God's counsel might stand in spite of them. Here is,
I. The cognizance God took of the design that was on foot: The Lord came down to see the city, Gen 11:5. It is an expression after the manner of men; he knew it as clearly and fully as men know that which they come to the place to view. Observe, 1. Before he gave judgment upon their cause, he enquired into it; for God is incontestably just and fair in all his proceedings against sin and sinners, and condemns none unheard. 2. It is spoken of an act of condescension in God to take notice even of this building, wh…
a tower whose top may reach unto heaven--a common figurative expression for great height (Deu 1:28; 9:1-6).
lest we be scattered--To build a city and a town was no crime; but to do this to defeat the counsels of heaven by attempting to prevent emigration was foolish, wicked, and justly offensive to God.
Adam Clarke on Genesis 11:5
And the Lord came down - A lesson, says an ancient Jewish commentator, to magistrates to examine every evidence before they decree judgment and execute justice.
John Gill on Genesis 11:5
And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower,.... Not locally or visibly, being immense, omnipresent, and invisible; nor in order to see and take notice of what he otherwise could not see from heaven, for he is omniscient; but this is spoken after the manner of men, and is to be understood of some effects and displays of his power, which were manifest, and showed him to be present: the Targum is,"and the Lord was revealed to take vengeance on them on account of the business of the city and tower the children of men built.''This shows the patience and longsuffering of God, that he did not immediately proceed against them, and his wisdom and justice in taking cognizance of the affair,…
The Church Fathers
Moses represents God as descending to the tower that the sons of men were building, seeking to inspect it and saying, "Come, let us go down quickly, and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech." Who do the heretics think was the God that descended to the tower in this passage and then sought to visit these men? Was he God the Father? In that case, God is enclosed in a place. If so, how then does he embrace all things? Or is it possible that he speaks of an angel descending with other angels and saying, "Come, let us go down quickly, and there confuse their language"? On the contrary, we note in Deuteronomy that it was God who recounted these things and God who spoke, where it is written: "When he scattered abroad the sons of Adam, he set up the boundaries of the people according to the number of the angels of God." Therefore the Father did not descend, nor did an angel command these things, as the narrative clearly indicates. Accordingly, the only remaining conclusion is that he descended of whom the apostle Paul says, "He who descended, he it is who ascended also above all heavens, that he might fill all things," that is, the Son of God, the Word of God.
The Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of Adam were building. The old translation has for the sons of Adam the sons of men, that is, not the sons of God, but those who, living according to man, deserved to hear from the Lord: "I said, you are gods, and all of you sons of the Most High; but you will die like men" (Psalm 81:6). However, God does not move from a place, who is always wholly everywhere; but He is said to descend when He does something on earth which, done wonderfully beyond the usual course of nature, shows His presence in some way; nor does He learn by seeing in time, who can never be ignorant of anything; but He is said to see and know in time, that which He makes to be seen and known. Therefore, the city was not thus seen as God made it to be seen, when He showed how much it displeased Him; although it can be understood that God descended to that city, because His angels had descended, in whom He dwells, so that what follows: "And He said: Behold, the people is one, and they all have one language," and the rest, and then added: "Come, let us go down, and there confound their language," might be a recapitulation, showing how what was said, "the Lord came down," was done; for if He had already descended, what does "come, let us descend" mean, which is understood to have been said to the angels, unless because He had descended through the angels, who were descending in the angels?
Dictionary and topics
Architecture — The book of (Genesis 4:17,20,22) appears to divide mankind into two great characteristic sections, viz., the “dwellers in tents” and the “dwellers in cities.” To the race of Shem is attributed…
Babel — (confusion), Bab’ylon (Greek form of Babel), is properly the capital city of the country which is called in Genesis Shinar, and in the later books Chaldea, or the land of the Chaldeans. The first…
Babel, tower of — The name given to the tower which the primitive fathers of our race built in the land of Shinar after the Deluge (Gen. 11:1-9). Their object in building this tower was probably that it might be seen…
Mesopotamia — The country between the two rivers (Heb. Aram-naharaim; i.e., “Syria of the two rivers”), the name given by the Greeks and Romans to the region between the Euphrates and the Tigris (Gen. 24:10; Deut.…
Shinar, The Land of — LXX. and Vulgate “Senaar;” in the inscriptions, “Shumir;” probably identical with Babylonia or Southern Mesopotamia, extending almost to the Persian Gulf. Here the tower of Babel was built (Gen.…
Tongues, Confusion of — At Babel, the cause of the early separation of mankind and their division into nations. The descendants of Noah built a tower to prevent their dispersion; but God “confounded their language” (Gen.…
And the Lord came down. The remaining part of the history now follows, in which Moses teaches us with what ease the Lord could overturn their insane attempts, and scatter abroad all their preparations. There is no doubt that they strenuously set about what they had presumptuously devised. But Moses first intimates that God, for a little while, seemed to take no notice of them, [328] in order that suddenly breaking off their work at its commencement, by the confusion of their tongues, he might give the more decisive evidence of his judgment. For he frequently bears with the wicked, to such an extent, that he not only suffers them to contrive many nefarious things, as if he were unconcerned, o…
"Jehovah came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men had built" (the perfect בּנוּ refers to the building as one finished up to a certain point). Jehovah's "coming down" is not the same here as in Exo 19:20; Exo 34:5; Num 11:25; Num 12:5, viz., the descent from heaven of some visible symbol of His presence, but is an anthropomorphic description of God's interposition in the actions of men, primarily a "judicial cognizance of the actual fact," and then, Gen 11:7, a judicial infliction of punishment. The reason for the judgment is given in the word, i.e., the sentence, which Jehovah pronounces upon the undertaking (Gen 11:6): "Behold one people (עם lit., union, connected…
came down: The tower was a human attempt to ascend to God’s realm (see Deut 26:15; Pss 2:4; 103:19; 115:16). The folly of that attempt was exposed by God’s “coming down” to see their feeble efforts.
Rashi on Genesis 11:5
'וירד ה לראות AND THE LORD CAME DOWN TO SEE — He really did not need to do this, but Scripture intends to teach the judges that they should not proclaim a defendant guilty before they have seen the case and thoroughly understand the matter in question. This is to be found in Midrash of R. Tanchuma.
בני האדם THE CHILDREN OF MAN (ADAM) — But whose children could they have been (except the children of man, i.e. human beings) — perhaps the children of donkeys or camels? But it means the children of Adam Harishon who proved himself ungrateful when he said, (Genesis 3:12) “The woman whom Thou gavest to be with me, [she gave me of the tree etc.]”. These people, also, were ungrateful, rebelling aga…
TRINITY OF PERSONS IN THE UNITY OF THE DIVINE NATURE. — Come, and let us go down there and confound their tongue, that they may not understand each the voice of his neighbor. Is this to be understood in the sense that God told the angels? Or should we understand it rather according to what is read at the beginning of Genesis: Let us make man in our own image and likeness? (Gen 1:26) As the text continues in the singular: And the Lord scattered them thence over the face of all the earth , (Gen 11:9) when it was said: Let us make man in our image (Gen 1:27), he did not continue in the plural: "they did", but in the singular: God did ". [uestion 22] (Gen. 11:10-13). LIFE SPAN OF MEN BEFORE THE FLOOD. — In relation to what the Scripture says: And Arphaxad lived a hundred and thirty-five years, and begot Canaan. Arphaxad lived after he had begotten Canaan, four hundred years , or, as the Greek says: three hundred years , the question arises as to how God said to Noah: And the years of life of them a hundred and twenty years (Gen 6:3), for Arphaxad was not yet born when God said that, nor was he in the ark with his fathers. How, then, are we to understand the aforementioned one hundred and twenty years of human life, since there is a man who lived more than four hundred? The passage must be interpreted as meaning that twenty years before the beginning of the construction of the ark, a building that lasted for a hundred years, God said this to Noah, pre-announcing to him already that he would send the flood and that he did not predict the time of human life of men that were to be born after the flood, but the time of the human life of men that he would annihilate with the flood. [
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Language · Confusion of — Confusion of
Miracles · .The confusion of languages — .The confusion of languages
Tongue · Confusion of — Confusion of
Tower · Of Babel — Of Babel
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
