Genesis 11:3

Then they said to one another, ¹  “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” ²  (They had brick instead of stone and tar ³  instead of mortar.) ⁴ 

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

They said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly." And they used brick for stone, and they used tar for mortar.

They began to talk about construction projects. "Come," they said, "let’s make great piles of burnt brick and collect natural asphalt to use as mortar.

They said to one another, "Come, let's make bricks and fire them well." They used brick for stone and tar for mortar.

And they said one to another, Come, let us make bricks, burning them well. And they had bricks for stone, putting them together with sticky earth.

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.

Then they said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly." They had brick for stone, and they had asphalt for mortar.

Then they said to one another, ¹  “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” ²  (They had brick instead of stone and tar ³  instead of mortar.) ⁴ 

¹ tn Heb “a man to his neighbor.” The Hebrew idiom may be translated “to each other” or “one to another.”

² tn The speech contains two cohortatives of exhortation followed by their respective cognate accusatives: “let us brick bricks” (נִלְבְּנָה לְבֵנִים, nilbbÿnah lÿvenim) and “burn for burning” (נִשְׂרְפָה לִשְׂרֵפָה, nisrÿfah lisrefah). This stresses the intensity of the undertaking; it also reflects the Akkadian text which uses similar constructions (see E. A. Speiser, Genesis [AB], 75-76).

³ tn Or “bitumen” (cf. NEB, NRSV).

⁴ tn The disjunctive clause gives information parenthetical to the narrative.