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LXX Genesis

Septuagint

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Chapter 11

1 And all the earth was one lip, and there was one language to all. 2 And it happened as they moved from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they lived there.⁠ 3 And a man said to his neighbor, Come, let us make bricks and bake them with fire. And the brick was to them for stone, and their mortar was bitumen. 4 And they said, Come, let us build to ourselves a city and tower, whose top shall be to heaven, and let us make to ourselves a name, before we are scattered abroad upon the face of all the earth.⁠ 5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the sons of men built. 6 And the Lord said, Look, there is one race, and one lip of all, and they have begun to do this, and now nothing shall fail from them of all that they may have undertaken to do. 7 Come, and having gone down let us there confound their tongue, that they may not understand⁠ each the voice of his neighbor. 8 And the Lord scattered them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city and the tower. 9 On this account its name was called Confusion, because there the Lord confounded the languages of all the earth, and from there the Lord God scattered them upon the face of all the earth. 10 And these are the generations of Shem: and Shem was a son of one hundred years when he fathered Arphaxad, the second year after the flood.⁠ 11 And Shem lived, after he had fathered Arphaxad, five hundred years, and fathered sons and daughters, and died.⁠ 12 And Arphaxad lived one hundred and thirty-five years, and fathered Cainan.⁠ 13 And Arphaxad lived after he had fathered Cainan, four hundred and thirty years, and fathered sons and daughters, and died. And Cainan lived one hundred and thirty years and fathered Shelah; and Cainan lived after he had fathered Shelah, three hundred and thirty years, and fathered sons and daughters, and died. 14 And Shelah lived one hundred and thirty years, and fathered Heber. 15 And Shelah lived after he had fathered Heber, three hundred and thirty years, and fathered sons and daughters, and died. 16 And Heber lived one hundred and thirty-four years, and fathered Peleg. 17 And Heber lived after he had fathered Peleg three hundred and seventy years, and fathered sons and daughters, and died. 18 And Peleg lived one hundred and thirty years, and fathered Reu. 19 And Peleg lived after he had fathered Reu, two hundred and nine years, and fathered sons and daughters, and died. 20 And Reu lived one hundred thirty and two years, and fathered Serug. 21 And Reu lived after he had fathered Serug, two hundred and seven years, and fathered sons and daughters, and died. 22 And Serug lived one hundred and thirty years, and fathered Nahor. 23 And Serug lived after he had fathered Nahor, two hundred years, and fathered sons and daughters, and died. 24 And Nahor lived seventy-nine years, and fathered Terah. 25 And Nahor lived after he had fathered Terah, one hundred and twenty-nine years, and fathered sons and daughters, and he died. 26 And Terah lived seventy years, and fathered Abram, and Nahor, and Haran. 27 And these are the generations of Terah. Terah fathered Abram and Nahor, and Haran; and Haran fathered Lot. 28 And Haran died in the presence of Terah his father, in the land in which he was born, in the country of the Chaldeans. 29 And Abram and Nahor took to themselves wives, the name of the wife of Abram was Sarai, and the name of the wife of Nahor, Milcah, daughter of Haran, and he was the father of Milcah, and the father of Iscah. 30 And Sarai was barren, and did not bear children. 31 And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran, the son of his son, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, the wife of Abram his son, and led them forth out of the land of the Chaldeans, to go into the land of Canaan, and they came as far as Haran, and he lived there. 32 And the days of Terah in Haran were two hundred and five years, and Terah died in Haran.

Texts in conversation

Compare Genesis 11:4 and LXX Genesis 11:4

Hebrew Bible · Septuagint

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Summary

Genesis 11 says the tower was built to prevent the people from being scattered. The Greek Septuagint translation changes this, saying they already expected to be scattered and wanted to build the tower before that happens.

Passages

Genesis 11:4

Hebrew Bible
3 Then they said to one another, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” (They had brick instead of stone and tar instead of mortar.) 4 Then they said, “Come, let’s build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens so that we may make a name for ourselves. Otherwise we will be scattered across the face of the entire earth.” 5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the people had started building.
750–400 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Genesis

LXX Genesis 11:4

Septuagint
3 And a man said to his neighbor, Come, let us make bricks and bake them with fire. And the brick was to them for stone, and their mortar was bitumen. 4 And they said, Come, let us build to ourselves a city and tower, whose top shall be to heaven, and let us make to ourselves a name, before we are scattered abroad upon the face of all the earth. 5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the sons of men built.
300–201 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in LXX Genesis

References

"... In the Hebrew this is all motivated by a clause, i.e. the building of a city and a tower and the reputation thereby attained is intended to avoid a dispersal of the peoples throughout the earth; the city and tower, but primarily the latter, are to be a rallying point for keeping the people together. LXX Genesis has quite a different point of view. The translator realized that people inevitably scatter and has substituted ... The people want to make a name for themselves before they are scattered on the face of all the earth. In the tradition this infinitive is given a named subject ... the variant simply makes explicit what is already implicit ..."
John William Wevers, Notes on the Greek Text of Genesis, SCS 35 (Atlanta: Scholars, 1993), 149.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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Genesis 11:4 and LXX Genesis 11:4

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