Genesis 11:8

Summary

Genesis 11:8 narrates the consequence of the preceding events: Yehovah ("Yehovah", H3068G) scatters the people from the location referred to as sham ("there", H8033G) across the entire surface of the earth, and as a result they stop their construction project of the city.

Key words

• va-i.Ya.fetz ("and he scattered", H6327A) — hiphil narrative verb; the hiphil stem marks this as causative action, meaning Yehovah causes the dispersal rather than the people scattering by themselves.
• 'o.Tam ("them", H0853 + H9038) — the direct object marker fused with the third-person plural suffix, marking the people as the direct recipients of the scattering action.
• pe.Nei ("surface of", H6440J) — masculine plural noun in construct state, linking grammatically to what follows ("surface of all the earth"); construct nouns in Hebrew cannot stand alone and require a following noun to complete their meaning.
• va-i.yach.de.Lu ("and they ceased", H2308) — qal narrative verb, third person plural; qal is the basic/simple stem, contrasting with the causative hiphil used for Yehovah's action in the same verse.
• li-v.Not ("to build", H1129) — qal infinitive with prefixed preposition li ("to", H9005), forming a purpose/complement construction meaning "from building" or "to build," dependent on the verb yach.de.Lu.

What the text says

The verse divides into two clauses joined by narrative va ("and", H9001), a construction that chains sequential events in Hebrew narrative prose. The first clause has Yehovah as subject of i.Ya.fetz ("he scattered", H6327A), a hiphil verb — the causative stem indicates that the scattering is an action performed by Yehovah upon the people, not a spontaneous dispersal. The object is marked explicitly by 'o.Tam ("them", H0853+H9038), even though Hebrew grammar does not require the object marker before every object; its presence here makes the recipient of the causative action unambiguous.

The phrase 'al-pe.nei khol-ha-'A.retz ("over the face of all the earth") uses a chain of construct nouns: pe.nei ("surface of") is bound to khol ("all of"), which is itself bound to ha-'A.retz ("the earth"). This construct chain builds a single compound phrase describing the extent of the scattering — across the entire surface of the earth.

The second clause shifts to a qal (non-causative) verb, i.yach.de.Lu ("they ceased", H2308), with the people as subject, followed by the infinitive li-v.Not ("to build", H1129) governing ha-'Ir ("the city", H5892B). The infinitive construction with the preposition li expresses the activity that ceased — building the city — as a single grammatical unit dependent on the verb of ceasing.

Differences between versions

The LXX adds καὶ τὸν πύργον ("and the tower") at the end of the verse, an element not present in the Hebrew text, which mentions only ha-'Ir ("the city", H5892B). The Vulgate renders mi-Sham ("from there") as "ex illo loco" ("from that place") and expands "over the face of all the earth" into "in universas terras" ("into all the lands"), a phrasing that shifts the singular construct chain of the Hebrew into a plural expression.