Mixed Up Speech and The Father of a New Nation

Good evening from a wet Panhandle. Yes, praise God it is raining and has been for awhile now. Maybe the Lord has seen fit to end our drought.

When I was in seminary I took a class called “Church Recreation.” In that class we played a game called “The Tower of Babel.” For the first five minutes each team could talk and uses both hands to try and build the tallest free standing tower out of newspaper and masking tape. The second five minutes no one was allowed to speak and everyone could only use one hand. It was fun but hard, we all kept wanting to talk.

Tonight we look at the events that surround the original Tower of Babel in Chapter 11 of the Book of Genesis.

Genesis 11:1-9

11:1 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2 As men moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.

3 They said to each other, "Come, let's make bricks and bake them thoroughly." They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth."

5 But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. 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."

8 So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel--because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

1. The Frustrations of the Nations

Nimrod among other magnificent achievements had founded Babel. The people who gathered there all spoke the same language, and they set about the task of building the city despite the fact that their building resources were pitifully inadequate. “They had brick for stone, and they had asphalt for mortar” (Gen. 11:3).

Their decision to build a “tower whose top is in the heavens” is therefore even more surprising but apparently their reasoning had been affected by their stated objective to “make a name for ourselves” (v. 4). Some people see this as the first organized attempt at humanistic society which would be convinced of its own ability to survive under its own steam and to promote its own interests and protect itself from all ills.

But God, who had shown His interest and involvement in the affairs of Adam and Noah, not to mention many others, was not unaware of what was going on in Babel. “The Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built” (v. 5). Self-sufficiency and independence are not bad things unless... Unless you become so self-sufficient and independent that you push God out of your life. That is exactly what the people in Babel were doing. So once again the Lord stepped in saying, “Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech” (v. 7).

The result of this action was the dispersion of the people, the rejection by God of man’s attempt to find security in man independent of God, and a divine rebuff to man’s attempts to reach heaven and forcibly bring God down to them.

There is an interesting pun on the name Babel. In its original form it can mean “gate of God,” but it can also mean “confusion” (see Gen. 11:9). It may be permissible to see something of the pun at work in modern attempts by man to reach into the heavens of his own accord, to unite to solve the world’s problems on the basis of human ingenuity, and his untiring efforts to make a name for himself, only to meet frustration and confusion. Even the former Secretary General of the United Nations, which perhaps epitomizes man’s modern efforts and designs, stated in his 1984 report that the organization’s “majestic vision” had been clouded, that it had been impossible “to take any peacekeeping action at all” in some situations, and he admitted that many people are concluding that something is “wrong with the United Nations and with the concept of internationalism.”

The divine decision to “confuse the language” (v. 7) which on the surface appears somewhat harmless has had profound and far-reaching consequences. Language is sometimes defined as “a system of arbitrary vocal symbols by means of which a social group cooperates.” English-speaking peoples have decided that “mist” means something akin to “fog, vapor, etc.,” but Germans have determined that “mist” means “dung or manure.”

Nike had a Chinese New Year translation fail of its own this year.  It’s Special Edition Air Force 1 shoe could be customized with the characters 發 (‘fa’) and 福 (‘fu’) embroidered on the heels.  Viewed separately, the characters mean “prosperity” and “luck.” Viewed side-by-side as they were shown in  the advertisement for the sneakers, however, they sent a different message: “Get fat.” Oops!

 Fry Harder Next Time “Authorities Fry Hard to Fix Korean Menus Lost in Translation” is the headline of a story in Korea Times about government attempts to clean up translation errors in Chinese menus.

When President Carter traveled to Poland in 1977, the State Department hired a Russian interpreter who knew Polish, but was not used to interpreting professionally in that language. Through the interpreter, Carter ended up saying things in Polish like "when I abandoned the United States" (for "when I left the United States") and "your lusts for the future" (for "your desires for the future"), mistakes that the media in both countries very much enjoyed.

It is not necessary to point out the possibilities for confusion! Neither is it hard to see why there is so much estrangement and tension in our world when we remember that many people know only one language, have little knowledge of other cultures, and are therefore ill-equipped to “cooperate” with other peoples.

Gen 11:10-32

10 This is the account of Shem.

Two years after the flood, when Shem was 100 years old, he became the father of Arphaxad. 11 And after he became the father of Arphaxad, Shem lived 500 years and had other sons and daughters.

12 When Arphaxad had lived 35 years, he became the father of Shelah. 13 And after he became the father of Shelah, Arphaxad lived 403 years and had other sons and daughters.

14 When Shelah had lived 30 years, he became the father of Eber. 15 And after he became the father of Eber, Shelah lived 403 years and had other sons and daughters.

16 When Eber had lived 34 years, he became the father of Peleg. 17 And after he became the father of Peleg, Eber lived 430 years and had other sons and daughters.

18 When Peleg had lived 30 years, he became the father of Reu. 19 And after he became the father of Reu, Peleg lived 209 years and had other sons and daughters.

20 When Reu had lived 32 years, he became the father of Serug. 21 And after he became the father of Serug, Reu lived 207 years and had other sons and daughters.

22 When Serug had lived 30 years, he became the father of Nahor. 23 And after he became the father of Nahor, Serug lived 200 years and had other sons and daughters.

24 When Nahor had lived 29 years, he became the father of Terah. 25 And after he became the father of Terah, Nahor lived 119 years and had other sons and daughters.

26 After Terah had lived 70 years, he became the father of Abram, Nahor and Haran.

27 This is the account of Terah.

Terah became the father of Abram, Nahor and Haran. And Haran became the father of Lot. 28 While his father Terah was still alive, Haran died in Ur of the Chaldeans, in the land of his birth. 29 Abram and Nahor both married. The name of Abram's wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor's wife was Milcah; she was the daughter of Haran, the father of both Milcah and Iscah. 30 Now Sarai was barren; she had no children.

31 Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, the wife of his son Abram, and together they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan. But when they came to Haran, they settled there.

32 Terah lived 205 years, and he died in Haran.

2. The Genealogy of Abram (Abraham)

Starting in verse 12 we see the line of Noah's son Shem. In this line we find Abram, later on to be called Abraham and the “Father of Nations” by God. From Abraham comes Isaac, Jacob, the twelve tribes that will make up the Nation of Israel, David ( a man after God's own heart), and then the one whose kingdom will last forever. Yes, Christ Jesus will be a descendant of Abraham through His earthly mother, Mary. He is the one who offers salvation to all mankind and restores our relationship with His and our heavenly Father if we will admit we are a sinner, believe He is God/man who died for our sins and rose again three days later, and confess Him as our LORD and Saviour.