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Bible Dictionaries
Tongues, Confusion of
Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible
or TONGUES, CONFUSION OF . The belief that the world, after the Flood, was re-populated by the progeny of a single family, speaking one language, is reconciled in the Bible with the existing diversity of tongues by a story which relates how the descendants of Noah, in the course of their wanderings, settled in the plain of Shinar, or Babylonia, and there built of brick a city, and a tower high enough to reach heaven, as a monument to preserve their fame, and as a centre of social cohesion and union. But the Lord discerned their ambitious purposes, and, after consulting with the Divine beings who constituted His council and court (cf. Genesis 1:26; Genesis 3:22 ), frustrated their design by confounding their speech, so that concerted action was no longer possible for them. In consequence, the name of the city was called Babel (see below), and its builders were compelled to disperse over the face of the earth ( Genesis 11:1-9 ).
The story belongs to a class of narratives (of which there are several in the Bible) intended to explain the origin of various institutions, or usages, the existence of which excited the curiosity of a primitive race. Among these was the prevalence in the world of different languages, which contributed so greatly to produce between the various peoples, who were thus unintelligible to one another, feelings of mutual suspicion and fear (cf. Deuteronomy 28:49 , Isaiah 28:11; Isaiah 33:19 , Jeremiah 5:15 ). The particular explanation furnished was doubtless suggested partly by the name of the city of Babel , or Babylon (which, though really meaning ‘gate of God,’ was by a popular etymology connected with the Heb. word bâlal , ‘to confuse’), and partly by the presence, at or near Babylon, of the ruins of some great tower, which looked as though it had originally been designed as a means to scale heaven. Two such towers, or ziqqurats , were the temple of Merodach (or Marduk) in Babylon (supposed to be beneath the mound of Babil ), and the temple of Nebo in Borsippa (the ruins of which form the mound of Birs Nimroud ); and knowledge of one or other of these may have helped to shape the narrative. The character of the narrative makes it impossible to consider it as real history: it bears on its surface manifest evidence that it is a creation of primitive fancy. The question whether the various languages of mankind have really been derived from one common tongue cannot be separated from the question (into which it is unnecessary to enter here) whether the various races of men have sprung from a single stock, i.e. ‘whether man appeared originally on the globe at one centre or at many centres.’ It may be said, however, that philological research has proved that the numerous existing languages are members of a comparatively small number of families of speech (such as the Indo-European, the Semitic, etc.); but that between these families of speech there is so great a difference of structure, that their descent from one original tongue seems highly improbable. At the same time, all languages must have arisen from certain faculties and instincts common to human nature; and the presence, in languages belonging to distinct families, of onomatopoetic, or imitative, words serves to illustrate the essential similarity of human tendencies in the sphere of speech all the world over.
G. W. Wade.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Tongues, Confusion of'. Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdb/t/tongues-confusion-of.html. 1909.
