Genesis 11:5-9

The Beginning of the Various Languages

v. 5. And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the children of men builded. God could not let this challenge to His almighty government of the world go unanswered. He made arrangements to interfere. For though it was a mighty city which the children of men were building, a city whose dimensions astonish the explorer even today, the foundations of whose tower and of the many other architectural adornments are a source of constant surprise, it was but as a grain of dust in the hands of the almighty God.

v. 6. And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do; and now nothing will be restrained from them which they have imagined to do.

v. 7. Go to, let us go down and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. The Lord first sets forth the situation as He found it: Behold, one people they are, one connection, one association, one community, and one speech they all have. These two factors made the people strong in the pursuit of a common interest. What they had begun to do they would work for with all possible energy; and nothing would be restrained, held back, from them. The result would be the eventual destruction of true freedom, of personal life, and of the plans which God had concerning the Messiah. So God confounded their language, confused their speech, the miracle consisting in an inward process by which the old association of ideas connected with words was taken away, and new and utterly different modes of expression were immediately implanted. The confusion was so complete that the people could no longer understand one another, and all working together was excluded.

v. 8. So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth; and they left off to build the city. That was the consequence of the miracle. A great migration of families and tribes over the whole earth began, by which men were scattered to the four winds. The great project as planned naturally had to be abandoned. Even if some few people, whom we may now term Babylonians, remained in the city, to be conquered afterward by Nimrod, the purpose of the human race in its blasphemous pride was not realized.

v. 9. Therefore is the name of it called Babel, because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth; and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth. Babel means confusion, and the result of the confusion of tongues is before our eyes to this day. The human race is divided, one nation separated from the other by the difference of speech. Even today, however, the blasphemous arrogance of mankind is apparent. In the erection of many great buildings, in the invention of many new arts, man is not seeking the welfare of his neighbor and the honor of God, but his own glory. It is necessary, time and again, for the Lord to interfere with a mighty hand, even as the day of the Lord will finally be upon every one that is proud and lofty, and he shall be brought low, Isaiah 2:12.