For some translators at least, there is a problem between verses 6 and 7 regarding where the LORD is when he speaks. In verse 5 the narrator tells us that the LORD went down to where the people were; and if we did not have verse 7, we would think that verse 6 contains what he spoke or thought to himself in that situation. But in verse 7 he is apparently back in his place in heaven, since he speaks about going down to the people. There are two possible sequences of movements and speeches that can describe what happened in verses 5-7:
(1) The LORD went down (verse 5)
The LORD thought about the situation (verse 6)
The LORD went back to his own place
The LORD spoke about what he was going to do (verse 7)
(2) The LORD went down (verse 5)
The LORD went back to his own place
The LORD thought about the situation (verse 6)
The LORD spoke about what he was going to do (verse 7)
To make the text perfectly clear in line with possibility (1), it is necessary to break the speech or thought of the LORD at the end of verse 6, and then to begin verse 7 with words like “After that he [the LORD] returned, and then he said….” In the case of possibility (2), the beginning of verse 6 will have to be something like “When the LORD had seen what was going on and returned to his place, he said….”
Come, let us go down: Come is the same word as spoken by the people in verses 3 and 4. Go down is as in Gen 11.5. Let us go down is the same construction used in 1.26, in which God speaks of himself in the plural. See 1.26 for discussion. Speiser translates “Let me, then, go down,” and translators may wish to follow this. In the light of the statement in verse 5, one translation has “Let us go down again….”
Confuse their language: confuse translates a verb meaning “mix up,” “put in disorder,” “confound” (Hebrew balal; see comments on Gen 11.9). It is not certain whether this means that the single language of the people was made into a number of different languages, whether the vocabulary was scrambled, or whether some other linguistic confusion prevailed. However, the LORD’s intention was that they may not understand one another’s speech. Speech translates the same word rendered “language” by Revised Standard Version in Gen 11.1. Understand translates the usual word for “hear,” which in many languages in this context has the sense of to understand what is spoken.
In some languages one another’s speech may have to be restructured. For example, one translation has “… so that one will no longer understand the talk of another.” Another translation says “… mix up their language so they can’t talk together.”
Quoted with permission from Reyburn, William D. and Fry, Euan McG. A Handbook on Genesis. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1997. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .