Genesis 11:1

And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech,.... Or had been (w), before the flood, and from that time to this, and still was, until the confusion took place; the account of which, and

And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. The whole earth was of one language, and of one speech - literally, of one lip, and of the same words. Vitringa ('De Confus.

GENESIS CHAPTER 11. One language in the earth, . They journey from the east, settle in a plain in the land of Shinar, ; make bricks, which they burn and use with slime, ; build a city and tower that they might not be scattered, . God sees it, . Disapproves their design, ; defeats it, and scatters them by confounding their language, ,8; for which reason the place called Babel, . The posterity of Shem to Abram, . Abram takes Sarai to wife, . She is barren, . He removes from Ur to Haran, , where his father dies, . Earth is oft put for its inhabitants, as . Of one speech, which even heathen writers acknowledge; and that probably was the Hebrew tongue.

Genesis 11:1 And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.Ver. 1. And the whole earth was of one language.] Unity without verity, is no better than conspiracy. A legion of devils could accord to get into one man; and, though many, yet they speak and act as one in that possession. That infernal kingdom is not divided against itself. A shame for God’ s saints to be at difference. What should sheep do snarling, like dogs, one at another? The children of this world are wiser, a fair deal, in their generation; they can combine and comply, as here; though their society be as unsavoury as the slime and filth that is congealed, when many toads and other vermin meet together.

XI.(1) The whole earth.—That is, all mankind. After giving the connection of the various races of the then known world, consisting of Armenia, the regions watered by the Tigris and Euphrates, the Arabian peninsula, the Nile valley, with the districts closely bordering on the Delta, Palestine, the Levant, and the islands of Cyprus, Rhodes, and Crete; with Lud on his journey to Asia Minor, and the Japhethites breaking their way into Europe through the country between the Caspian and the Black Sea: after this, we go back to the reason of this dispersion, which is found in the confusion of tongues. Of one language, and of one speech.—Literally, of one lip, and of words one: that is, both the pronunciation and the vocabulary were identical. As regards this primitive language, whereas but a few years ago the differences between the Sanscrit and the Semitic tongues were regarded as irreconcilable, recent inquiries tend to show that both have a common basis.

CHAPTER XI All the inhabitants of the earth, speaking one language and dwelling in one place, 1, 2, purpose to build a city and a tower to prevent their dispersion, 3, 4. God confounds their language, and scatters them over the whole earth, 5-9. Account of the lives and families of the postdiluvian patriarchs. Shem, 10, 11. Arphaxad, 12, 13. Salah, 14, 15. Eber, 16, 17. Peleg, 18,19. Ragau or Reu, 20, 21. Serug, 22, 23. Nahor, 24, 25. Terah and his three sons, Haran, Nahor, and Abram, 26, 27. The death of Haran, 28. Abram marries Sarai, and Nahor marries Milcah, 29. Sarai is barren, 30. Terah, Abram, Sarai, and Lot, leave Ur of the Chaldees, and go to Haran, 31. Terah dies in Haran, aged two hundred and five years, 32. NOTES ON CHAP. XI Verse 1. The whole earth was of one language] The whole earth - all mankind was of one language, in all likelihood the HEBREW; and of one speech - articulating the same words in the same way. It is generally supposed, that after the confusion mentioned in this chapter, the Hebrew language remained in the family of Heber. The proper names, and their significations given in the Scripture, seem incontestable evidences that the Hebrew language was the original language of the earth-the language in which God spake to man, and in which he gave the revelation of his will to Moses and the prophets. "It was used," says Mr. Ainsworth, "in all the world for one thousand seven hundred and fifty-seven years, till Phaleg, the son of Heber, was born, and the tower of Babel was in building one hundred years after the flood, Genesis 10:25; Genesis 11:9. After this, it was used among the Hebrews or Jews, called therefore the Jews' language, Isaiah 36:11, until they were carried captive into Babylon, where the holy tongue ceased from being commonly used, and the mixed Hebrew (or Chaldee) came in its place." It cannot be reasonably imagined that the Jews lost the Hebrew tongue entirely in the seventy years of their captivity in Babylon; yet, as they were mixed with the Chaldeans, their children would of course learn that dialect, and to them the pure Hebrew would be unintelligible; and this probably gave rise to the necessity of explaining the Hebrew Scriptures in the Chaldee tongue, that the children might understand as well as their fathers. As we may safely presume the parents could not have forgotten the Hebrew, so we may conclude the children in general could not have learned it, as they did not live in an insulated state, but were mixed with the Babylonians. This conjecture removes the difficulty with which many have been embarrassed; one party supposing that the knowledge of the Hebrew language was lost during the Babylonish captivity, and hence the necessity of the Chaldee Targums to explain the Scriptures; another party insisting that this was impossible in so short a period as seventy years.

1. the whole earth] i.e. the inhabitants of the whole earth, as in Genesis 10:25. one language … one speech] An expressive phrase, denoting that the generations of primitive man, being of one stock, continued to speak one common language. The Jewish tradition, which was followed by Christian tradition, as represented by Patristic, mediaeval, and many modern writers, assumed that Hebrew was the primitive language. This, however, was an assumption resting on no more satisfactory foundation than (1) the proper names of the early Genesis narratives, and (2) the supposition that the language of the Chosen People was sacred and therefore aboriginal. The whole theory has been disproved by the scientific comparative study of languages, and of Hebrew and the cognate Semitic languages in particular.

- The Confusion of Tongues 1. נסע nāsa‛ “pluck out, break up, journey.” מקדם mı̂qedem “eastward, or on the east side” as in Genesis 2:14; Genesis 13:11; Isaiah 9:11 (12). 6.

1. Whole earth… one language… one speech — Hebrew, as margin, one lip and one words. The whole population of the earth was one lip, and one kind of words.