The First Foreign Language

1 Now the whole earth had one language and few words. 2 And as men migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. 3 And they said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly." And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. 4 Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth." 5 And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the sons of men had built. 6 And the LORD said, "Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; and nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down, and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another's speech." 8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. 9 Therefore its name was called Ba'bel, because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth; and from there the LORD scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.Excerpt from Genesis 11

That passage has always fascinated me. I ran onto it again today when I was preparing a condensed study of Abram/Abraham to explain the references Paul makes in "Galatians" to God's covenant with Abraham.

There are many commentators who have taken on interpreting "why" God reacted with this, there could be studies on the brilliance of His actions in terms of "effectiveness". Far too many that can't even make a bug that reproduces, or can't even create a seed that grows into a tree and reproduces...will none the less think themselves wise enough to "judge" God's actions here...but the bottom line is, we can't comprehend the why. We don't know the whole story of what God's plan for man was and how His action here "righted" the course. Yet in terms of "effect" it was brilliantly creative.

Mankind has been on this Earth approximately 7,000 years. If you truly listen to the amazing diversity in comparing Russian to Chinese to Arabic to English...you'll see how powerfully this single day in history changed the entire world of events.

Anyhow...It is definitely an interesting event.