the Week of Proper 26 / Ordinary 31
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Bible Dictionaries
Language
Hawker's Poor Man's Concordance And Dictionary
or It is plain from Scripture, that in the early ages of the world, "the whole earth was of one language and of one speech." (Genesis 11:1) The diversity arose as a punishment for the building of Babel. It hath been a subject of more curiosity than profit to enquirers from whence arose the first communication of thought by speech, and who taught men the use of language, or the power to diversify sound for conveying ideas. Some have gone so far, in order to ascertain what would be the first articulation of a child untaught by hearing others so as to express his own thoughts, that infants have been kept from all hearing of conversation, purposely to discover what the first sounds of speech would be. But while men have thus employed their time and attention to the discovery of what, even if it could have been attained, would not have profited, the word of God teaches the cause of speech in the great Giver of all good, and the diversity of speech when the entrance of sin into the world had made man rebellious. But what a decided proof is this, among may, of the overruling power of God to cause good to spring out of evil, that as sin induced a confusion of languages, grace rendered this very confusion a means for the greater display of the riches of mercy in the confirmation of the truth of the gospel; for by the confusion at Babel, and the diversity of languages that followed, what a blessed opportunity was thereby afforded, when at the day of Pentecost, the poor, ignorant, and unlearned disciples of Jesus gave testimony of the truth by conversing with the greatest fluency in no less than fifteen different languages to the different nations of the earth then assembled at Jerusalem. So the Lord overruled the sin of Babel to his own glory. (See Acts 2:1-11)
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Hawker, Robert D.D. Entry for 'Language'. Hawker's Poor Man's Concordance and Dictionary. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/pmd/l/language.html. London. 1828.
