And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter.
Go to - an adverb, interjectionally used as a term of incitement or exhortation. It is equivalent to 'Come on.' In two other passages where the Hebrew and Greek terms are rendered by the same English phrase, it is significant of preparation required (2 Kings 5:4-5; James 4:13-14). Dr. Samuel Johnson says that in English poetry it is a scornful exhortation.
Let us make brick, and burn them throughly - [Hebrew, lªbeeniym (H3843), of white or chalky clay]. Brickmaking, as here described, was a nice operation, requiring both skill and carefulness, not only in the selection of the clay, so as to exclude from the composition all extraneous matter-an excess of which would tend to make the bricks crack or vitrify-but also in the preparation of the brick, by applying the fire so that in the core as well as on the surface they might be formed of a uniform solidity and durability. It is evident from the language employed in the narrative that the builders at Babel were well acquainted with the finishing processes, and hence, since they contemplated the erection of edifices which would be capable of enduring, they resolved, in manufacturing the bricks, to "burn them throughly."
They had brick for stone. The building materials which Shinar furnished for the erection of edifices differed from those of almost every other country in the world. For instead of the marbles of some, or the stone quarries of most regions, the inhabitants of that land, with inventive resources and constructive skill which might have enabled them to rival the architectural achievements of the Egyptians and the Greeks, possessed nothing to build with but the soil of the alluvial plains. Moistening the loam with water, and mixing the softened gypsum with a small quantity of chopped straw or reeds, to increase its consistency, they moulded the raw brick into shape, and then dried it either by the sun or in the kiln. Sun-dried bricks were common in Assyria, since they are in the buildings of the villages still in that country, being easily procured and soon prepared under the intense heat of an almost torrid sun, where the thermometer stands daily at 150 degrees Fahrenheit. Two, or at most three days in that climate are sufficient for the process. But in Babylonia the bricks were usually burnt in the kiln; and the numerous architectural remains which have been disinterred from the accumulated mounds show that they had been baked so effectually as to acquire the firmness of freestone or the solidity of granite.
The walls of cities were almost invariably built of fire-burnt bricks; and the walls as well as floors of the royal palaces, except where the hands of exploring antiquarians have disturbed them, were formed of the same material, which remains as compact as at the period when these buildings were constructed. Sometimes the inner parts of the buildings were made of sun-dried bricks, while the exterior portion was strengthened by a covering of burnt brick ten feet in thickness, as at Warka. At other times the crude and the burnt bricks were placed in alternate layers of several feet thick.
The bricks made in later times, as in Nebuchadnezzar's reign, were formed generally in shape and size about a foot or 11 1/2 inches square and 2 or 2 1/4 inches thick. But the bricks found at Nimru, Koyunjik, etc., which belong to an earlier age, are much larger, and variously shaded-some square, others oblong, some triangular, and others wedge-like-though none are fashioned in the longitudinal form with which in Britain we are familiar.
And slime had they for mortar, х lachomer (H2563)] - so called, according to Gesenius, from a Hebrew root signifying to boil: either from its boiling up from subterranean fountains (Genesis 14:10) or from its redness, the best kind being of that colour.
Josephus ('Antiquities,' 1: 4, 63) calls it Asphaltis; and we give it the name of bitumen or asphalt. It is a remarkable mineral pitch, termed from the decomposition of animal and vegetable substances, and one of the most inflammable of known materials. It is found some times in the form of a solid fossil, at other times in a liquified state on the surface of lakes and wells.
Herodotus (b. 1:, ch. 179) relates that masses of bitumen were washed down the Is, a small stream which joins the Euphrates at the point where stands the modern Hit, a little mud-walled town, inhabited by a population of Jews and Arabs, about eight days' journey from Babylon, whence it was brought to that capital.
And Diodorus Siculus says (b. 2:, pp. 120-123) that there was an almost inexhaustible supply of naphtha obtained from the pits, which were very numerous in Babylonia. This slime, or mud of the country, is still applied by the Arab inhabitants, as a substitute for mortar, in cementing the bricks of which their habitations are formed. The bitumen and naphtha were often boiled together, to form a superior cement; and of so tenacious a quality is it, that, in the ancient palaces which Layard disinterred, that writer tells us, 'it is almost impossible to detach a brick from the entire mass.' Each brick was laid on hot liquid bitumen, and a layer of reeds pressed down on every thirtieth row, where crude bricks were used (cf.Arrian, 'De Exped. Alex.,' lib. vii; Strabo, 'Geog.,' lib. 16:; Pliny, 35: 51; Vitringa, 8:3).