Genesis 11:4

Summary

The verse reports the collective speech of the people, introduced by va-yomeru ("and they said", H0559). They issue a self-directed call (havah, H3051) to build a city and a tower whose top will reach the heavens, stating two purposes: to make a shem ("name", H8034) for themselves and to avoid being scattered (naphutz, H6327A) over the surface of the earth.

Key words

• Havah ("give", H3051) — qal imperative with paragogic he, functioning as a self-exhortative interjection ("come on") rather than a literal command to give something.
• Nivneh ("let us build", H1129) — qal imperfect, 1st person plural, expressing cohortative/future intention ("let us build").
• Rosho ("its top", H7218I) — masculine singular noun in construct state with pronominal suffix "its", referring back to migdal ("tower", H4026M).
• Na'aseh ("we may make", H6213H) — qal imperfect with prefixed vav, 1st person plural, continuing the sequence of intended actions ("and let us make").
• Pen ("lest", H6435) — subordinating particle introducing a negative purpose clause, linking the building project to the stated motive of avoiding dispersal.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a chain of cohortative verbs (nivneh, na'aseh) framed by the initial interjection havah, which does not mean "give" in a transactional sense here but functions idiomatically as a call to action, similar to "come" or "let's go." This creates a rhetorical structure typical of collective decision-making speech: interjection + verb of building + object (ir, "city", H5892B; migdal, "tower", H4026M) + a further purpose clause introduced by a second cohortative (na'aseh... shem).

The construct phrase rosho va-shamayim ("its top in the heavens") uses the construct noun rosh ("top", H7218I) with a suffixed pronoun referring to the tower, followed by the noun shamayim ("heavens", H8064) in the plural — a grammatical plural common for this noun in Hebrew, not necessarily indicating multiple heavens.

The final clause is governed by the particle pen ("lest", H6435), which subordinates the verb naphutz ("we should be scattered", H6327A) as the feared outcome the city and name-making are meant to prevent. The construct chain penei kol ha-aretz ("the surface of all the earth") uses two successive construct nouns (penei, H6440J; kol, H3605) before the definite noun aretz ("earth", H0776G).

Differences between versions

The LXX renders rosho ba-shamayim as "οὗ ἡ κεφαλὴ ἔσται ἕως τοῦ οὐρανοῦ" ("whose top will reach as far as the heaven"), adding the verb "will be" and using singular "heaven" (οὐρανοῦ) where the Hebrew has plural shamayim. The Vulgate similarly supplies a verb, "cujus culmen pertingat ad cælum" ("whose top may reach to heaven"), also singular. The Hebrew clause itself contains no verb "reach"; the sense of reaching is implied by the construct phrase alone. Additionally, the LXX renders pen ("lest", H6435) as "πρὸ τοῦ" ("before"), shifting the nuance from prevention of an outcome to temporal priority, while the Vulgate's "antequam" ("before") follows a similar temporal reading rather than the Hebrew's negative-purpose sense.