Genesis 11:5

11:5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the people had started building.

Genesis 14:21

14:21 Then the king of Sodom said to Abram, “Give me the people and take the possessions for yourself.”

Genesis 26:11

26:11 So Abimelech commanded all the people, “Whoever touches this man or his wife will surely be put to death.”

Genesis 41:57

41:57 People from every country came to Joseph in Egypt to buy grain because the famine was severe throughout the earth.

Genesis 47:21

47:21 Joseph made all the people slaves from one end of Egypt’s border to the other end of it.

tn Heb “the sons of man.” The phrase is intended in this polemic to portray the builders as mere mortals, not the lesser deities that the Babylonians claimed built the city.

tn The Hebrew text simply has בָּנוּ (banu), but since v. 8 says they left off building the city, an ingressive idea (“had started building”) should be understood here.

tn Heb “strikes.” Here the verb has the nuance “to harm in any way.” It would include assaulting the woman or killing the man.

tn The use of the infinitive absolute before the imperfect makes the construction emphatic.

tn Heb “all the earth,” which refers here (by metonymy) to the people of the earth. Note that the following verb is plural in form, indicating that the inhabitants of the earth are in view.

tn Heb “and he”; the referent (Joseph) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

tc The MT reads “and the people he removed to the cities,” which does not make a lot of sense in this context. The Samaritan Pentateuch and the LXX read “he enslaved them as slaves.”