Bede : The Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of Adam were building. The old translation has for the sons of Adam the sons of men, that is, not the sons of God, but those who, living according to man, deserved to hear from the Lord: "I said, you are gods, and all of you sons of the Most High; but you will die like men" (Psalms 81:6). However, God does not move from a place, who is always wholly everywhere; but He is said to descend when He does something on earth which, done wonderfully beyond the usual course of nature, shows His presence in some way; nor does He learn by seeing in time, who can never be ignorant of anything; but He is said to see and know in time, that which He makes to be seen and known. Therefore, the city was not thus seen as God made it to be seen, when He showed how much it displeased Him; although it can be understood that God descended to that city, because His angels had descended, in whom He dwells, so that what follows: "And He said: Behold, the people is one, and they all have one language," and the rest, and then added: "Come, let us go down, and there confound their language," might be a recapitulation, showing how what was said, "the Lord came down," was done; for if He had already descended, what does "come, let us descend" mean, which is understood to have been said to the angels, unless because He had descended through the angels, who were descending in the angels? — Commentary on Genesis (Hexaemeron) Novatian : Moses represents God as descending to the tower that the sons of men were building, seeking to inspect it and saying, "Come, let us go down quickly, and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech." Who do the heretics think was the God that descended to the tower in this passage and then sought to visit these men? Was he God the Father? In that case, God is enclosed in a place. If so, how then does he embrace all things? Or is it possible that he speaks of an angel descending with other angels and saying, "Come, let us go down quickly, and there confuse their language"? On the contrary, we note in Deuteronomy that it was God who recounted these things and God who spoke, where it is written: "When he scattered abroad the sons of Adam, he set up the boundaries of the people according to the number of the angels of God." Therefore the Father did not descend, nor did an angel command these things, as the narrative clearly indicates. Accordingly, the only remaining conclusion is that he descended of whom the apostle Paul says, "He who descended, he it is who ascended also above all heavens, that he might fill all things," that is, the Son of God, the Word of God. — ON THE TRINITY 17.7 Augustine of Hippo : TRINITY OF PERSONS IN THE UNITY OF THE DIVINE NATURE. — Come, and let us go down there and confound their tongue, that they may not understand each the voice of his neighbor. Is this to be understood in the sense that God told the angels? Or should we understand it rather according to what is read at the beginning of Genesis: Let us make man in our own image and likeness? (Genesis 1:26) As the text continues in the singular: And the Lord scattered them thence over the face of all the earth , (Genesis 11:9) when it was said: Let us make man in our image (Genesis 1:27), he did not continue in the plural: "they did", but in the singular: God did ". [uestion 22] (Gen. 11:10-13). LIFE SPAN OF MEN BEFORE THE FLOOD. — In relation to what the Scripture says: And Arphaxad lived a hundred and thirty-five years, and begot Canaan. Arphaxad lived after he had begotten Canaan, four hundred years , or, as the Greek says: three hundred years , the question arises as to how God said to Noah: And the years of life of them a hundred and twenty years (Genesis 6:3), for Arphaxad was not yet born when God said that, nor was he in the ark with his fathers. How, then, are we to understand the aforementioned one hundred and twenty years of human life, since there is a man who lived more than four hundred? The passage must be interpreted as meaning that twenty years before the beginning of the construction of the ark, a building that lasted for a hundred years, God said this to Noah, pre-announcing to him already that he would send the flood and that he did not predict the time of human life of men that were to be born after the flood, but the time of the human life of men that he would annihilate with the flood. [ — QUESTIONS ON GENESIS, Q. 21 (tr. J. Litteral, draft)