Kejadian 11:3

11:3 Then they said to one another, ¹  “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” ²  (They had brick instead of stone and tar ³  instead of mortar.) ⁴ 

Daniel 7:25

7:25 He will speak words against the Most High.

He will harass ⁵  the holy ones of the Most High continually.

His intention ⁶  will be to change times established by law. ⁷ 

They will be delivered into his hand

For a time, times, ⁸  and half a time.

[11:3]  ¹ tn Heb “a man to his neighbor.” The Hebrew idiom may be translated “to each other” or “one to another.”

[11:3]  ² tn The speech contains two cohortatives of exhortation followed by their respective cognate accusatives: “let us brick bricks” (נִלְבְּנָה לְבֵנִים, nilbbÿnah lÿvenim) and “burn for burning” (נִשְׂרְפָה לִשְׂרֵפָה, nisrÿfah lisrefah). This stresses the intensity of the undertaking; it also reflects the Akkadian text which uses similar constructions (see E. A. Speiser, Genesis [AB], 75-76).

[11:3]  ³ tn Or “bitumen” (cf. NEB, NRSV).

[11:3]  ⁴ tn The disjunctive clause gives information parenthetical to the narrative.

[7:25]  ⁵ tn Aram “wear out” (so KJV, ASV, NRSV); NASB, NLT “wear down.” The word is a hapax legomenon in biblical Aramaic, but in biblical Hebrew it especially refers to wearing out such things as garments. Here it is translated “harass…continually.”

[7:25]  ⁶ tn Aram “he will think.”

[7:25]  ⁷ tn Aram “times and law.” The present translation is based on the understanding that the expression is a hendiadys.

[7:25]  ⁸ sn Although the word times is vocalized in the MT as a plural, it probably should be regarded as a dual. The Masoretes may have been influenced here by the fact that in late Aramaic (and Syriac) the dual forms fall out of use. The meaning would thus be three and a half “times.”