The Lord came down, and Babel

11:5 says that the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the sons of men were building. In 11:6–7 he says that they are one people with one language, and that nothing they plot will be withheld; then, Come, let Us go down and confuse their language. The capital “Us” is the BSB’s; it is not in the Hebrew. The cohortative plural answers the builders’ “come” of 11:3–4. 11:8–9 then records the scattering they had feared, and the name Babel from balal, “he confused.” “Came down” has been read as an anthropomorphism for God’s attention (Calvin; Keil), or as a real descent. The plural has been read as deliberation or majesty; as God addressing a heavenly court (Driver; the Targum of Jonathan names seventy angels; Jubilees has “we descended with him”); or as a Trinitarian hint (Calvin). Augustine allows the Trinity but prefers the angels. “Came down” and “let us go down” do not name the hearers. The confusion of language has been read as a sudden miraculous split, a rapid fracturing, or the start of language families over a short time; the text does not say how many languages, or by what process. Each of these readings is set out on its grounds, and none is adopted here. The wording, including the BSB’s recast of 11:6, is in the Hebrew language notes; the Greek keeps a first-person plural in 11:7, as the Greek note records.