Kejadian 11:7

11:7 Come, let’s go down and confuse ¹  their language so they won’t be able to understand each other.” ² 

Kejadian 11:1

The Dispersion of the Nations at Babel

11:1 The whole earth ³  had a common language and a common vocabulary. ⁴ 

1 Korintus 14:21

14:21 It is written in the law: “By people with strange tongues and by the lips of strangers I will speak to this people, yet not even in this way will they listen to me,” ⁵  says the Lord.

[11:7]  ¹ tn The cohortatives mirror the cohortatives of the people. They build to ascend the heavens; God comes down to destroy their language. God speaks here to his angelic assembly. See the notes on the word “make” in 1:26 and “know” in 3:5, as well as Jub. 10:22-23, where an angel recounts this incident and says “And the Lord our God said to us…. And the Lord went down and we went down with him. And we saw the city and the tower which the sons of men built.” On the chiastic structure of the story, see G. J. Wenham, Genesis (WBC), 1:235.

[11:7]  ² tn Heb “they will not hear, a man the lip of his neighbor.”

[11:1]  ³ sn The whole earth. Here “earth” is a metonymy of subject, referring to the people who lived in the earth. Genesis 11 begins with everyone speaking a common language, but chap. 10 has the nations arranged by languages. It is part of the narrative art of Genesis to give the explanation of the event after the narration of the event. On this passage see A. P. Ross, “The Dispersion of the Nations in Genesis 11:1-9,” BSac 138 (1981): 119-38.

[11:1]  ⁴ tn Heb “one lip and one [set of] words.” The term “lip” is a metonymy of cause, putting the instrument for the intended effect. They had one language. The term “words” refers to the content of their speech. They had the same vocabulary.

[14:21]  ⁵ sn A quotation from Isa 28:11-12.