The Day One Language Changed to Many
When you don’t understand another person’s language, talking louder doesn’t help. The people of Babel quickly found that out.
At the beginning in Genesis 11, all the people on earth spoke one language. Nine verses later, everyone suddenly spoke different languages.
A Little History
God pays attention to us. Our actions and words interest Him..
In Genesis 6 mankind had become so evil that God wiped out the whole human race with a flood. Only Noah, his wife, his 3 sons and the women they married survived. Using these three couples, God repopulated the entire earth.
Several generations later, people started working together to build a city named Babel, and a tower that would reach “to the heavens” (Genesis 11:4). God stopped this work project by messing up the people’s ability to talk clearly to one another.
So what was that day like?
A Hospital Analogy
Imagine an American hospital where the medical staff, the visitors and all the patients wake up Wednesday morning speaking English. Suddenly at 11:43 A.M. a female doctor expresses her thoughts in Vietnamese and the nurse confusedly asks a question in Hungarian. Six strangers step off the elevator, excitedly babbling in Arabic, Chinese, Russian, Finnish, Portuguese and Hindi.
Doing surgery suddenly is impossible. Emergency patients in the ER can’t describe their symptoms. A daughter isn’t able to ask questions about her elderly father’s medication. Experts can still read the MRIs and run laboratory tests, but they’re not able to share their new insight about the patients with other doctors.
People can’t even write notes in a common language. No one can voice their fears or shout a clear warning.
Emotionally and mentally isolated, everyone’s frustration grows more intense.
People start to panic.
Gradually over the next week or two, every citizen in the whole city comes to understand the same painful truth.
A displeased, all-powerful Deity has flipped a switch in everyone’s brain, changing their lives forever.
The new language each person speaks is now permanently “fixed.”
Does the Trinity Dislike Tall Towers?
Building a tall tower isn’t sinful.
After all, every major city in the world has several tall buildings. Back in 1883, the Chicago Daily wrote an article called “The High Building Craze” and first used the term “sky-scraper” to refer to a very tall building. The first skyscraper was 10 stories tall, and 138 feet high. It opened in Chicago the following year. In contrast, New York’s One World Trade Center—completed 130 years later—is 104 stories tall and 1,776 feet high.
So why did God interfere? In verse 6 we have the Almighty’s answer.
6 The Lord said, If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.” (Genesis 11:6-7 NIV)
Why did the Almighty confuse everyone’s speech? Why did He disrupt the completion of the tower of Babel?
The Reason Why
I think God saw that this major achievement would change the way the people viewed themselves. Arrogance and selfish pride would start to grow once more in the human heart.
These sinful attitudes are often the start of a corrupt and wicked life.
Evil people are usually full of themselves. Self-focused. Completely without concern about anyone else. If you help an evil man or woman, they’ll use you and then discard you. Try to stop them and they’ll trample you into the dirt. Excessive pride opens the door to abuse.
Noah’s flood had just rebooted the human race a few chapters before. The high level of evil in mankind had been destroyed. But it could quickly begin growing again.
So the Lord decided to disrupt the building project in Babel and bring it to an end.
Yet the Almighty spared Babel’s builders too.
Two Acts of Divine Mercy
God shows his mercy in two ways.
First, He wasn’t harsh. His goal was to permanently disrupt the work, but He did it very gently.
- No earthquakes or deadly plagues took place.
- The ground didn’t suddenly crack open, swallowing the entire city.
- Burning sulfur didn’t rain down from the skies.
Instead, He simply changed the languages people spoke.
Secondly, after dividing them, our God linked people together.
Searching through the crowds, people eventually found others they could talk to. To step back into my hospital analogy, the female doctor found a few other human beings in the city who spoke Vietnamese, just like she did..
Yes, God scrambled the languages. But He also hand-picked who each person could share their thoughts with. The relief of being understood must have been enormous. People who spoke the same language formed into separate, distinct groups and stayed close together. Eventually they traveled on. The new life wouldn’t be easy—but it would be interesting.
So let me ask a question.
If God hand-picked all your future friends, family and co-workers, do you think He would do a good job?
All images came from Pixabay.com.
Resources:
“New Evidence: Bible’s Tower of Babel was Real” link
