What Does Genesis 11:3 Mean?
And they said one to another, Come, let us make brick, and burn them through. And they had brick for stone, and tar for mortar.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter.THE KEY
The Hebrew brick-word echoes “white,” and the verse shows pale earth hardened by fire and put in stone’s place.
THE MEANING
You see human making at work: earth becomes uniform, fire hardens it, and brick takes stone’s place. Shared words turn those substitutions into a collective plan, with bitumen serving as mortar.
THE ROOT
לְבֵנִים
leḇēnîm
GROWS FROM
לבן
Be white or pale; the Hebrew word for brick is associated with the pale clay from which it is made.
The Hebrew word for brick belongs to the consonantal family of לָבָן (lavan), “white” or “pale.” English names only the finished object; the Hebrew retains an echo of its material as the brick is shaped and fired to stand in for stone.
ALSO GROWS
lavan: White; pale.
לָבָן
It shares the consonants ל־ב־ן with the brick-word, revealing the color association hidden by the English word “brick.”
levanah: Moon; the pale or white one.
לְבָנָה
This related form carries the same consonants and extends the family’s association with whiteness.
levenah: Brick; the singular form of the word in this verse.
לְבֵנָה
The singular makes clear that the collective plan depends on producing many separate, uniform units.
נִשְׂרְפָה לִשְׂרֵפָה
nisrefah lisrefah
GROWS FROM
שרף
Burn; consume by fire.
“burn them through” in this verse is nisrefah lisrefah. The same root appears first as the act and then as its outcome: “burn them to a burning.” Fire is the process that hardens the molded earth into a durable substitute for stone.
ALSO GROWS
serephah: Burning; a consuming fire.
שְׂרֵפָה
This noun shares the root שרף with the verb in the verse, making the burning itself part of the stated result.
saraf: Fiery serpent; burning one.
שָׂרָף
The KJV’s “fiery serpents” in Numbers 21:6 uses this same consonantal family, preserving the root’s force of burning.
חֵמָר
ḥēmār
GROWS FROM
חמר
The shared consonants ח־מ־ר link the verse’s word for bitumen with its word for clay or mortar; the precise lexical relationship is uncertain.
“tar” in this verse is ḥēmār. The two Hebrew forms share the consonants ח־מ־ר: ḥēmār names the bitumen, while ḥōmer names the mortar or clay. The verse places the sticky substance in the binding role, and its sound makes that pairing audible in Hebrew.
ALSO GROWS
ḥēmār: Bitumen; pitch.
חֵמָר
This is the substance translated “slime” in the verse and it shares the consonants ח־מ־ר with the word for mortar.
ḥōmer: Clay; mortar.
חֹמֶר
This is the material’s stated function in the verse, echoing the consonants of חֵמָר.
THE PATTERN
The material and craft chosen for a structure reveal the purpose it is made to serve.
And they made their lives bitter with hard service, in clay and in brick, and in all the labor of the field; every service they made them serve was with crushing.But now, LORD, you are our father. We are the clay, and you our potter, and all of us are the work of your hand.Now if anyone builds on this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, grass, stubble;THE THREAD
And they made their lives bitter with hard service, in clay and in brick, and in all the labor of the field; every service they made them serve was with crushing.Exodus uses the same Hebrew brick-word, לְבֵנִים (leḇēnîm), but the brick now serves forced labor. The shared root shows how the same pale, fired unit can carry sharply different purposes in the hands of those who build with it.
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