Genesis11:5

Translation

But then YHVH (read Adonai) descended to inspect

the fortified place of terror,

and the tower which the sons of the adam

had built.

Paraphrase

Then, to describe it in human terms, THE ETERNAL AND PERSONAL GOD came closer in order to inspect the city where they all lived together in terror even though it was fortified, and also the tower which mankind had partially built in order to make a judicial decision about what must be done.

Footnotes

1: "inspect"

Here God is spoken of in human terms, depicted as a king coming to the scene of a problem in order to inspect the situation and make a judicial decision about what must be done. This does not mean that God did not already know what was going on. While much of the Bible teaches us how far beyond us God is, there are parts of it that portray Him in terms that make Him seem closer, more understandable to us. In this case the choice makes sense, for any wise judge would have done what God did; He determined that what they were doing must be stopped and He took action to stop it.

2: "fortified place of terror"

This word is usually rendered as “city”. It has two primary emphases, that of “a fortified place,” and that of “terror”; in fact the concept of terror or fearful amazement is the root idea of the word.

3: "the adam"

In the creation narrative, “the adam” was a reference to mankind, represented in the first man; but later the use of the name Adam, without the article, meant the man by the name Adam. Here “the adam” is used and thus it is a referenced to mankind in general.

4: "had built"

We know from verses 6 and 8 that they had not yet completed the tower, therefore this word “built” must be expressed in an incomplete manner.

A CITY WAS A FORTIFIED PLACE OF TERROR

This word for “city” meant “terror or fearful amazement” and it also meant “fortification.” The connection between fortification and terror seems to be that a city, fortified with protected walls, was a place that people would run to if the terror of an enemy army would approach.

However, the choice of this word in this context is interesting because it appears that the entire human population was together in this one place. So, who were they protecting against? My theory is that Nimrod convinced them to build a walled city so that if some decided to leave them, those who stayed with him would have an advantage from the beginning. It was another preemptive move on his part to “encourage” people to stay with him and not split away.

Yet another layer of meaning here is that terror was probably the attitude of the people toward Nimrod; they stayed in the city because he forced them to. He probably started out as a winsome leader who used force only when he had to, but he ended up using threats of force as his primary tool of control over the people. So, the place that was supposedly built to keep the danger out, ended up in this case, being a place that kept the people and the danger they feared most, hemmed in together.