Texts in Conversation
Genesis 11 and Genesis 18 describe God saying “I will go down” to examine human actions, using unusual first-person language. Both describe God not as all-knowing and are more interested in showing God participating directly in human activity.
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Genesis 11:7
Hebrew Bible
6 And the Lord said, “If as one people all sharing a common language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be beyond them. 7 Come, let’s go down and confuse their language so they won’t be able to understand each other.” 8 So the Lord scattered them from there across the face of the entire earth, and they stopped building the city.
Date: 5th Century B.C.E. (Final composition) (based on scholarly estimates)
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Genesis 18:21
Hebrew Bible
20 So the Lord said, “The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so blatant 21 that I must go down and see if they are as wicked as the outcry suggests. If not, I want to know.” 22 The two men turned and headed toward Sodom, but Abraham was still standing before the Lord. 23 Abraham approached and said, “Will you really sweep away the godly along with the wicked?
Date: 5th Century B.C.E. (Final composition) (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... In verse 6 the reason for YHWH’s intended confusion of the “one lip” in verse 7 is given. In verse 7 God plans his action as saboteur. With a short soliloquy in the first-person plural (recalling Genesis 2–3, Genesis 6:5–7, Genesis 18:20–21 and even Exodus 3:7–8) ... The connection between the latter two texts has also been observed ... The word דרי with YHWH as subject and first-person plural is only attested in Genesis 11:7; דרי in the first-person singular with YHWH as subject is also very rare: besides Genesis 18:21, in order to investigate Sodom and Gomorrah, it is only attested in Exodus 3:8, to save Israel, and in Numbers 11:17, to support Moses ... God exhorts himself to descend and to confuse the “lip” of the people, in order to destroy their ideal, unanimous, primordial inter-human communication. The divine speech in verse 7 forms a parallel with the people’s speech in verses 3–4 ..."
Berlejung, Angelika
"Living in the Land of Shinar: Reflections on Exile in Genesis 11:1–9" in Dubovský, Peter, et al. (eds.) The Fall of Jerusalem and the Rise of the Torah
(pp. 89-112) Mohr Siebeck, 2016
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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