What Does Genesis 11:6 Mean?
And the LORD said, Look, they are one people, and they have all one lip; and this is what they begin to do. And now nothing they have devised to do will be walled off from them.
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 the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.THE KEY
What the KJV calls “restrained” carries the sense of what is inaccessible or withheld: shared language makes even the unreachable seem within a people’s grasp.
THE MEANING
When people share words and purpose, their reach can exceed each person’s private limits. Their plans move beyond imagination into coordinated action. The verse names that power without declaring every purpose good.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that what one person cannot do is impossible for people together falls away: shared language can multiply capacity until nothing they plan seems out of reach.
THE ROOT
יִבָּצֵר
yibbāṣēr
GROWS FROM
בצר
batsar
To cut off; in this form, to be withheld or inaccessible.
“walled off” in this verse is yibbāṣēr. The verb reaches beyond simply stopping someone: it describes what is inaccessible or kept out of reach. The verse says that, with one language and purpose, nothing they plan will remain beyond their grasp.
ALSO GROWS
mibtsar: Fortress; fortified place.
מִבְצָר
The same root describes a place made inaccessible, echoing the verse’s image of nothing being withheld from the people.
batsir: Grape harvest; vintage.
בָּצִיר
The root also names grapes cut from the vine and gathered, a sense of cutting off that sits alongside its use for what is inaccessible or withheld.
יָזְמוּ
yāzəmū
GROWS FROM
זמם
zamam
To devise, plan, or plot.
“devised” in this verse is yāzəmū. “Imagined” here means deliberately planned, not merely pictured. Paired with “to do,” it traces an intention becoming coordinated action.
ALSO GROWS
mezimmah: Plan, design, or device.
מְזִמָּה
This planning word appears in Job 42:2 in a line that also uses batsar, linking the verse’s planned work to what can or cannot be withheld.
zimmah: Plan or scheme; in some contexts, a wicked design.
זִמָּה
Its range shows that planning can serve different aims; the verse describes the people’s growing capacity without itself calling their purpose good.
שָׂפָה
safah
GROWS FROM
שפה
safah
Lip; by extension, an edge or language.
The word translated “language” also means “lip.” The verse places human coordination in the shared means of speech: many voices meet at one common lip.
ALSO GROWS
safah: Lip.
שָׂפָה
The literal sense beneath “language” makes speech bodily and shared: one people speaks with one lip.
sefat hayam: The lip or shore of the sea.
שְׂפַת הַיָּם
The same word can name an edge, revealing another layer in “one language”: many voices meet at a common boundary of speech.
THE PATTERN
When people share an orientation, coordinated action reaches beyond what isolated effort can build.
So we built the wall, and all the wall was tied together to half of it, for the people had heart to work.And the multitude of those who trusted were of one heart and one living soul. Not one of them said that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared all things in common.THE THREAD
I know that you can do all things, and that no plan can be walled off from you.Job echoes Genesis with the same verb for what can be withheld, and the same word family for a plan. Genesis describes a unified people reaching for what seems inaccessible; Job places that language beside a purpose nothing can be withheld from God.
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