Genesis 11

My Notes Authors

My Notes Authors Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown - Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible 3. brick—There being no stone in that quarter, brick is, and was, the only material used for building, as appears in the mass of ruins which at the Birs Nimroud may have been the very town formed by those ancient rebels. Some of these are sun-dried—others burnt in the kiln and of different colors.

My Notes Authors John Calvin - Commentaries **But Sarai was barren. Not only does he say that Abram was without children, but he states the reasons namely, the sterility of his wife; in order to show that it was by nothing short of an extraordinary miracle that she afterwards bare Isaac, as we shall declare more fully in its proper place. Thus was God pleased to humble his servant; and we cannot doubt that Abram would suffer severe pain through this privation. He sees the wicked springing up everywhere, in great numbers, to cover the earth; he alone is deprived of children. And although hitherto he was ignorant of his own future vocation; yet God designed in his person, as in a mirror, to make it evident, whence and in what manner his Church should arise; for at that time it lay hid, as in a dry root under the earth.

My Notes Authors Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown - Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible 6. and now nothing will be restrained from them—an apparent admission that the design was practicable, and would have been executed but for the divine interposition. John Calvin - Commentaries **Behold, the people is one. Some thus expound the words, that God complains of a wickedness in men so refractory, that he excites himself by righteous grief to execute vengeance; not that he is swayed by any passions,329329 “Non quod in ipsum cadant ulli affectua.” but to teach us that he is not negligent of human affairs, and that, as he watches for the salvation of the faithful, so he is intent on observing the wickedness of the ungodly; as it is said in Psalms 34:16 ,

My Notes Authors John Calvin - Commentaries **So the Lord scattered them abroad. Men had already been spread abroad; and this ought not to be regarded as a punishment, seeing it rather flowed from the benediction and grace of God. But those whom the Lord had before distributed with honor in various abodes, he now ignominiously scatters, driving them hither and thither like the members of a lacerated body. This, therefore, was not a simple dispersion for the replenishing of the earth, that it might every where have cultivators and inhabitants; but a violent rout, because the principal bond of conjunction between them was, cut asunder.

My Notes Authors John Calvin - Commentaries **Therefore is the name of it called Babel. Behold what they gained by their foolish ambition to acquire a name! They hoped that an everlasting memorial of their origin would be engraven on the tower; God not only frustrates their vain expectation, but brands them with eternal disgrace, to render them execrable to all posterity, on account of the great mischief indicted on the human race, through their fault. They gain, indeed, a name, but not each as they would have chosen: thus does God opprobriously cast down the pride of those who usurp to themselves honors to which they have no title. Here also is refuted the error of those who deduce the origin of Babylon from Jupiter Belus.331331 בבל, (Babel,) is derived from בלל, (balel,) which signifies to confound. See Schindler’s Lexicon, sub voce בלל. The name Babel signifies, as Bishop Patrick says, “confusion; so frivolous is their conceit, who make it to have been called by this name, from Babylon, the son of Belus.” — Ed