A recent trip to France allowed me the opportunity to practice my very limited and rusty French speaking skills. I had a wonderful teacher for four years in high school and took the required college levels for my degree. This teacher was insistent that we practice the proper accent and cadence of the language, imitating the “lilt” that native French folks use when they speak. A lot of that came flooding back to me as I interacted with people, and it didn’t take long before words were popping up in my head that I hadn’t thought about in years. One tour guide was very complimentary and invited me to stay and practice more. That emboldened me to carefully order lunch in a different town the next day (after practicing in my head for a few minutes) only to have the waitress respond to me in English. She asked me if I was Canadian. Mon Dieu!

Have you ever wondered how the different languages evolved? Why is it that we don’t all speak Adam and Abraham’s Hebrew?

Genesis 11 (The Message)

11 ^1-2 At one time, the whole Earth spoke the same language. It so happened that as they moved out of the east, they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled down.

³ They said to one another, “Come, let’s make bricks and fire them well.” They used brick for stone and tar for mortar.

⁴ Then they said, “Come, let’s build ourselves a city and a tower that reaches Heaven. Let’s make ourselves famous so we won’t be scattered here and there across the Earth.”

⁵ God came down to look over the city and the tower those people had built.

^6-9 God took one look and said, “One people, one language; why, this is only a first step. No telling what they’ll come up with next—they’ll stop at nothing! Come, we’ll go down and garble their speech so they won’t understand each other.” Then God scattered them from there all over the world. And they had to quit building the city. That’s how it came to be called Babel, because there God turned their language into “babble.” From there God scattered them all over the world.

These were the descendants of the Ark, years after the great flood. God had given them the direction to scatter throughout the earth and fill it (Genesis 9:1) and so their gathering to build themselves a city was in direct disobedience to his word. The mortar that they used was the same type that was mentioned in Genesis 6:14 as the type Noah used in building the Ark. It is also mentioned again in Exodus 2:3 when Moses’ mother used it to waterproof baby Moses’ little basket. So if people who are the progeny of the post-flood era truly believed the promise that God would never again flood the earth, why are they building themselves a waterproof tower? They demonstrated their unbelief.

God spotted the potential for rebellion here, and in his mercy, scattered them and confused their language so that they could never “gang up” again. The Tower of Babel is where we take the phrase “to babble,” or speak nonsense. God slowed their rebellion for a time in what amounted to a holy time-out, but if you know your Old Testament history, they would soon enough find other ways to rebel against God’s word.

As do we.

Think about how much of your day is filled with the non-sensical babble of political pundits vomiting their opinions in place of actual facts. Think about how much of your day is spent babbling with people on social media posting vapid meme after meme. Think about the babbling of a world that has turned away from God in an ever increasing cacophony of secularism. Are we much different?

God, in his mercy, is always ready to “come down” and dwell among us if we only ask and are ready to listen. May we covenant to build towers of testimony to his grace so that all may hear in one language that Jesus Christ is Lord.

Bon Soir, Paris