Part two of the Tower of Babel Series! What did it mean that the people had one language and one vocabulary? Didn’t the last chapter tell us that there were like seventy languages? This week we are going to talk about the different possibilities and we are going to discuss what an “international language is”—plus, we are going to talk about the festival of Shavuot/Pentecost where all those confused languages went into reverse so that all people could hear the Greatest Story Ever Told!
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Hi! I’m Miss Tyler and welcome to another episode of Context for Kids where I teach you guys stuff most adults don’t even know. If this is your first time hearing or if you have missed anything, you can find all the episodes archived at contextforkids.podbean.com, which has them downloadable, or at contextforkids.com, where I have transcripts for readers or on my Context for Kids YouTube channel.
(Parents, all Scripture comes from the CSB this week, the Christian Standard Bible, and we will be in Genesis 11 and Acts 2) Today’s broadcast is about the one language at the Tower of Babel and the miracle of Pentecost!
We are starting Genesis chapter 11 today and so that means some really exciting stuff! The Tower of Babel is a really complicated and controversial story—complicated because there are a lot of context tidbits that are hard to notice and controversial because there are so many theories and I will be sharing some of them with you. Sometimes that shocks and surprises people because when we only hear one story, we just assume that we know for sure what happened but in the Bible, there aren’t usually very many details about some of the most famous stories of all. Storytellers fill in the blanks with guesses—you know, our “what if” stories, and after a while, when we read the Bible we have those in mind and we forget that they are guesses. That would be a huge problem if the Bible was a book about, “Famous quotes from Noah” when he only says one thing in his entire story, or “Gardening tips from Adam and Eve” when nothing at all is said about that, or “The Life and Times of Nimrod” when we don’t know much of anything, or “The Shocking True Life Reason Why the People Built the Tower of Babel.” But this is a book about God and how He relates to us. This is God’s story and not Noah’s or Nimrod’s or anyone else’s. They are just side characters, extras, in God’s story. And God is the one we need to know about. Everything else is just interesting and helps us understand God and His rescue plan better.
The story of the Tower of Babel begins with two mini-mysteries and an idiom that will be important throughout the entire Bible—and not only the Bible but the beliefs of every ancient culture! Gen 11:1-2 says, “The whole earth had the same language and vocabulary. As people migrated from the east, they found a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there.” First of all, what does the idiom, “the whole earth” mean? Because it is an idiom, that means it doesn’t mean exactly what it says it means. Obviously, the planet earth doesn’t talk so the whole earth can’t mean the planet. But it also doesn’t usually mean all the people on earth either. Sometimes it does but phrases like “all the world” or “the whole world” only mean a small part of the world. In Luke 2, we see that Caesar Augustus commanded that all the world be registered (so they could be taxed) but all that means is the Roman Empire. Caesar had no authority over all of Europe, Asia, or Africa, just small parts. But they called their lands “all the world” anyway. So what does it mean, that the whole earth had the same language and vocabulary? Well, there are a few possibilities. The first is that this all took place before Genesis 10 and the Table of Nations, before Nimrod, and before all the generations split off with all their lands, clans, nations, and languages. That is possibly what Moses was telling them. Maybe this is the whole group of Noah’s descendants as they are traveling away from the mountains of Ararat, where it would do no good to try and plant a vineyard or raise critters, and perhaps they found this wonderful oasis in a valley in Sumer (remember, what the Bible calls Shinar, we call Sumer) in the cradle of civilization where we can find so much proof of ancient people exactly where the Bible says they were. And if that is the case, it is no surprise that the people all still had the same language and vocabulary.
The second possibility is that this happened hundreds of years after Noah, maybe during the life of Nimrod and maybe he was even there. Remember that he isn’t mentioned as being there at all and in fact, no one is ever named in the story except for God. We left Nimrod back at the beginning of chapter 10. By this time, maybe the people were different enough that they did have their own languages already. Remember that when ancient people wrote their genealogies, their family trees, they didn’t mention every single person—just the famous ones. So, we don’t know exactly how long after Noah lived that Nimrod would have been born. We just know that somewhere in between Noah and Nimrod were Ham and Cush. We do know that Ham was the actual son of Noah, but as for Cush and Nimrod, it isn’t totally clear—but that’s okay. Not everyone has to do things the way we do them now, right? So maybe this was hundreds and hundreds of years after Noah and there are already a whole lot of languages and people groups out there that descended from them. If that was the case, then the one language that the people all had might have been what we call an international language. An international language is a language that people from all different places speak when they want to communicate with one another. Do you know what the international languages are in the world today? The languages that businessmen learn so that they can do business with people all over the world so, they can communicate with one another and not just be totally confused or always needing translators? The most common business languages are English and Mandarin Chinese. Spanish and Arabic are also becoming very important. If a person could speak English, Mandarin, Spanish and Arabic fluently then they could make a ton of money working for businesses. And although it may sound funny that if a person from India and Germany wanted to do business together, that they might talk to one another in English, that’s just one of the easiest ways to do it. So, maybe a lot of time had gone by and people already had many languages but they still had the language that Noah spoke in common, and they used that to communicate with one another even if their cultures and languages had become very different.
So, that’s one mystery that we have because of Genesis 10, which is very strange. If Genesis 10 happened before Genesis 11, then they already had a bunch of languages plus another one that they could all use to understand each other when they got together. If Genesis 11 happened before Genesis 10, then they all had the same language because nobody had split up yet. And you know what? It doesn’t totally matter—it’s just interesting! I like these things because they remind me to read what is actually there and to think about it and not just assume that the movies and books have it right. The Bible is the most amazing book ever but it doesn’t tell us everything or answer all of our questions because it is here to help us understand God and not every little thing that happened in history or science or whatever. God wants us to have a relationship with Him, not Shem, Ham, or Japheth! They are very dead and we know almost nothing about them and it just doesn’t matter.
So, you probably already know what is going to happen in this story. The people (and it doesn’t say how many—might be all or just a few groups) are going to get together to build a tower and when they get together, they understand one another. God is going to see what they are doing and He is going to get very concerned about it, and He is going to make it so that they don’t understand each other anymore. So, either they all had the same language and God made a bunch of brand-new languages that were totally different from one another, or they already had a bunch of different languages and God made them forget the one language they maybe got from Noah that they all still understood. One way or another, by the end of the story they will have absolutely no way to talk with one another anymore. Dude, that would be so frustrating! It’s hard enough to get anything done and to cooperate even when we do speak the same language but when we don’t? Ugh, forget about it! Let’s just go home and play tiddly winks instead.
So, that’s the first mystery, and the second is a real puzzle. You see, sometimes the original Hebrew words can mean different things depending on how they are used, and sometimes we just do not know how to translate them. In this case, the Bible says, “As people migrated from the east…” in the Christian Standard Bible but other versions say, “As people migrated to the east…” so which one is right? The truth is that we don’t know. Some people think it should say that they were going east because whenever people get into trouble in the Bible they are usually heading east. East is away from Jerusalem and Israel, but they don’t exist yet in the story. Adam and Eve were booted out of the Garden and had to go to the east. Cain ran away from home and from God and went east. When the Israelites and the Jews were conquered thousands of years later, they are forced to go to the east. So, maybe the people who were traveling were going toward the east. But it could also be saying that they were coming from the east. The truth is that we just don’t know for sure. It’s another mystery but I wanted you to know why different Bibles say different things.
You know that the Bible was originally in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, right? Three languages that none of us can speak! And so, for me to be able to understand the Bible there are two choices—I either have to learn three ancient languages or someone who understands all of those languages needs to translate them into English for me otherwise I can just stare at the book all day and it will look like a book of spy codes and I will never understand anything at all! Thank God that He gave us people who are really smart about languages and who love God and want to translate the Bible so that we can understand what God wants us to know. But here’s the deal, it is really hard to translate from one language to another no matter how smart you are. For example—we’ve already talked about some words in ancient Hebrew that are only used once in the Bible and nowhere else in the whole world. What do those words mean?? We don’t know!! Translators have to look at all the other words and the story that is being told and they have to make a guess at what it meant. Sometimes, through archaeology, we can find clues to what the word might have meant but other times, we just have no idea. That makes it a really hard job! Other times, we don’t understand a situation in the Bible at all. There are actually a few laws in Exodus and Deuteronomy that no one understands, and even the ancient Rabbis would admit that they were just guessing because it is a complete mystery. And again, sometimes we dig up an ancient law code from one of Israel’s neighbors and we go, “OH! So that’s what they are talking about.”
One of the biggest problems in translating anything from one language to another is that some languages have words that can’t be translated accurately to another language and some that can’t be translated at all. One of my favorite words in the whole world is Ubuntu, and there is no word in English for it. It’s a South African word that describes how people should live together in love, harmony and generosity. Ubuntu is the kind of word that Jesus would have created—because it is certainly what He told us to do. But there is no word in English that means that so if I had to translate something from South African to English, it would take a paragraph to explain it every time the word came up! English needs a word that means Ubuntu—every language needs Ubuntu!
One more problem in translating from one language to another is that languages do not have the same sounds and so a lot of times people who speak one language can’t pronounce names in another. Like when the Hebrew parts of the Bible were translated into Greek—well, Greek didn’t have the “y” sound or the “sh” sound. Plus, men’s names had to end with an “s” sound and women’s names had to end with an “a” sound, but a lot of men’s names in Hebrew ended with vowel sounds so they had to be changed when it all got translated. The man we call Joshua now, his name was Yehoshua, and in Greek, they had to make it Iesouos because they couldn’t say “y” or “sh” and so the Jewish translators did the best they could to mimic those Hebrew sounds with other letters. And it isn’t like the translators could just make up new letter symbols for those sounds because no one would know what they even meant and they didn’t know how to make those sounds with their mouths. Imagine if I made a weird symbol and said it made a new sound. Unless I was there to tell you that sound, you would have no idea what it was. It wasn’t like they could go on YouTube and find out how to pronounce that new letter I made up. Not having one common language can be really confusing and tricky.
And sometimes words have more than one meaning! English is like THE WORST LANGUAGE EVER for that. Wound and wound are spelled exactly the same but they mean entirely different things depending on what the rest of the sentence says. You can even use them both in the same sentence, like “The doctor wound her bandages around the wound.” How about, “The wind began to blow and so I started to wind my watch.” Wind and wind are also spelled exactly the same way. If someone handed you a slip of paper with just the spelling of one of those words on it and asked you how it is pronounced or what it meant, you would either have to say you don’t know or would have to give them more than one way. What a mess! And so, we have words in Hebrew that can mean a lot of different things so we don’t totally know if those people were traveling east or traveling from the east but you know what? It doesn’t matter because all these people are dead and all that really matters is that they ended up in Shinar and they were all able to understand each other. There won’t be a test on this, I promise.
But when you are doing something complicated like building a city and a tower whose top is all the way in the sky, you need to be able to talk to one another about it or people are going to get hurt, and they will argue, and mistakes will be made. All of a sudden, this really cool project becomes one big hassle and you don’t even know if you can trust anyone else because you have no idea what they are talking about. And when they give you a weird look, you can’t ask them why. You can’t ask them anything and they can’t answer and how would you even come up with a way of talking with people who speak so many different languages. A lot of people would want everyone to start talking to them in their own language instead of learning everyone else’s. Everyone thinks their language is best, right? All of a sudden, all they wanted to accomplish together is not worth the effort.
What would the world be like if we did have one language that we all could speak? I think we would trust each other a lot more. We would definitely be more able to understand what other people are thinking, wanting, and needing. We could also accomplish amazing things, right? Would it be better than the way things are now? Do countries that have the same language get along with each other better than countries that don’t? Yes, pretty much. And yet, God is going to see people who can all talk with each other and understand and cooperate together and He is going to make it so they can’t. Why is what they are doing such a problem? Well, that’s a story for another day because something amazing happened thousands of years later after Jesus rose from the dead and after He left earth to sit at the right Hand of His Father. And it all has to do with the Bible holiday that we are celebrating this weekend—a holiday called Shavuot in Hebrew and Pentecost in Greek. Pentecost means “fiftieth”. It happens fifty days after the Feast of First Fruits, the day on the Bible calendar when Jesus was resurrected with a brand new, perfect body that doesn’t get old or sick anymore and can’t die. That’s the kind of body we will get too because we trust Him and believe that God did that because He was innocent and perfect.
Anyway, ten days after Jesus left, His disciples (men and women) were gathered all in the same place somewhere in the city of Jerusalem, and there were also Jews and god-fearing Gentiles from all over the world (remember, that means all the world that they knew about) staying in town too. These were people who had come to celebrate and worship God from all over the place and they spoke many different languages. There would have been worshipers from Europe (Rome, Greece, Spain), from Africa (Egypt, Ethiopia, Libya), and from Asia (Syria, Armenia, Pontus, and the Parthian Empire). The people who gathered in Jerusalem for the festivals would have sounded very much like those builders in that valley in Shinar once their language was confused—except they wouldn’t be panicked because this was normal for them! And all the followers of Jesus, who were all Jews who spoke the same language, had stayed the entire fifty days there in town because before He left, Jesus told them to wait and to be there on that very day because they were going to be filled with the Holy Spirit! They must have been so excited! Let’s read what happened from the book of Acts 2:
When the day of Pentecost had arrived, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like that of a violent rushing wind came from heaven, and it filled the whole house where they were staying. They saw tongues like flames of fire that separated and rested on each one of them. Then they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled them. Now there were Jews staying in Jerusalem, devout people from every nation under heaven. When this sound occurred, a crowd came together and was confused because each one heard them speaking in his own language. They were astounded and amazed, saying, “Look, aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? How is it that each of us can hear them in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites; those who live in Mesopotamia, in Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts), Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the magnificent acts of God in our own tongues.”
Wow, that must have been amazing! Just imagine all those people who speak so many different languages and they hear this huge, loud sound and they look around to see what is going on and they were all probably thinking of what had happened at Mt Sinai when God spoke to the people with a voice that sounded like thunder and they would have been anxious to follow that sound to wherever it was coming from because it was a festival day and they would certainly be expecting something amazing! And then they would have all found the followers of Jesus all saying the exact same thing in the language of absolutely everyone who showed up! In a few weeks, we will learn the story of how God made it impossible for the different groups of people to talk to each other and they all knew this story by heart—and they were seeing that God was undoing that at last, but only in the people who were preaching about Jesus and the Gospel of the Kingdom! And they could see that these weren’t educated men and women—they were from Galilee and would have been fishermen and farmers. They could speak languages that no Galilean would have even heard before, perfectly! They weren’t having to translate God’s message, they were speaking it in languages they had never heard as if they were born speaking it.
Why would God do that? Well, the people at the Tower of Babel wanted to build something for themselves that would make their name great and God put an end to that nonsense so they lost the ability to talk to each other. But when God wanted to build something to make His Name great—a Temple made out of people from every nation, tribe, and language on earth, a multicolored Temple—He made a miracle so that everyone could understand and go back to their homes and teach this wonderful message of God in their own countries so that everyone who loves God and Jesus could be one people, just like they were at Babel.
I love you. I am praying for you. And I pray that you have a wonderful time studying the Bible with the people who love you.