Kejadian 11:7

11:7 Come, let’s go down and confuse ¹  their language so they won’t be able to understand each other.” ² 

Kejadian 18:21

18:21 that I must go down ³  and see if they are as wicked as the outcry suggests. ⁴  If not, ⁵  I want to know.”

Keluaran 3:8

3:8 I have come down ⁶  to deliver them ⁷  from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up from that land to a land that is both good and spacious, ⁸  to a land flowing with milk and honey, ⁹  to the region of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. ¹⁰ 

[11:7]  ¹ tn The cohortatives mirror the cohortatives of the people. They build to ascend the heavens; God comes down to destroy their language. God speaks here to his angelic assembly. See the notes on the word “make” in 1:26 and “know” in 3:5, as well as Jub. 10:22-23, where an angel recounts this incident and says “And the Lord our God said to us…. And the Lord went down and we went down with him. And we saw the city and the tower which the sons of men built.” On the chiastic structure of the story, see G. J. Wenham, Genesis (WBC), 1:235.

[11:7]  ² tn Heb “they will not hear, a man the lip of his neighbor.”

[18:21]  ³ tn The cohortative indicates the Lord’s resolve.

[18:21]  sn I must go down. The descent to “see” Sodom is a bold anthropomorphism, stressing the careful judgment of God. The language is reminiscent of the Lord going down to see the Tower of Babel in Gen 11:1-9.

[18:21]  ⁴ tn Heb “[if] according to the outcry that has come to me they have done completely.” Even the Lord, who is well aware of the human capacity to sin, finds it hard to believe that anyone could be as bad as the “outcry” against Sodom and Gomorrah suggests.

[18:21]  ⁵ sn The short phrase if not provides a ray of hope and inspires Abraham’s intercession.

[3:8]  ⁶ sn God’s coming down is a frequent anthropomorphism in Genesis and Exodus. It expresses his direct involvement, often in the exercise of judgment.

[3:8]  ⁷ tn The Hiphil infinitive with the suffix is לְהַצִּילוֹ (lÿhatsilo, “to deliver them”). It expresses the purpose of God’s coming down. The verb itself is used for delivering or rescuing in the general sense, and snatching out of danger for the specific.

[3:8]  ⁸ tn Heb “to a land good and large”; NRSV “to a good and broad land.” In the translation the words “that is both” are supplied because in contemporary English “good and” combined with any additional descriptive term can be understood as elative (“good and large” = “very large”; “good and spacious” = “very spacious”; “good and ready” = “very ready”). The point made in the Hebrew text is that the land to which they are going is both good (in terms of quality) and large (in terms of size).

[3:8]  ⁹ tn This vibrant description of the promised land is a familiar one. Gesenius classifies “milk and honey” as epexegetical genitives because they provide more precise description following a verbal adjective in the construct state (GKC 418-19 §128.x). The land is modified by “flowing,” and “flowing” is explained by the genitives “milk and honey.” These two products will be in abundance in the land, and they therefore exemplify what a desirable land it is. The language is hyperbolic, as if the land were streaming with these products.

[3:8]  ¹⁰ tn Each people group is joined to the preceding by the vav conjunction, “and.” Each also has the definite article, as in other similar lists (3:17; 13:5; 34:11). To repeat the conjunction and article in the translation seems to put more weight on the list in English than is necessary to its function in identifying what land God was giving the Israelites.