Genesis 11:7

7. Let us… confound their language The solemn deliberation and decision of the Triune God is mysteriously intimated in this language . See note on Genesis 1:1; Genesis 1:26. So in the miracle of the Pentecost, which fore-shadowed the restoration of the unity shattered at Babel, CHRIST, at the right hand of the FATHER exalted, shed forth the SPIRIT upon the multitude from “every nation under heaven,” that is, representatives of the whole race.

The language of this verse certainly implies a sudden and miraculous, rather than a gradual and providential, action in the modification of human speech. The mode of such a miracle, as of all miracles, is, of course, inexplicable, for explanation is simply reference to some natural law, and where a miracle is concerned, causes above nature come into action. But the probable character of the miracle may be seen from considering the nature of language. All language, as shown above, can be reduced to some four or five hundred verbal roots, or consonantal combinations for in the power to produce consonants man’s vocal organs differ essentially from those of brutes and it was made natural, or instinctive, at creation, for man to produce these sounds to express the elementary ideas, (for example, to produce the sound st to denote fixedness, firmness, etc., as in stand, sto, ιστημι , see also on Genesis 11:1,) just as the dove instinctively coos and the cock crows to express certain emotions . These roots furnished man’s primary outfit, from which, by manifold modifications, he has developed language . Originally these modifications, to express action, passion, time, manner of action, (voice, mood, tense, etc . ,) were the same for all men; but now each family of languages has its own peculiar way of expressing them . The Shemitic family conveys these ideas mainly by internal modifications, interposing sounds between the root letters, the Aryan by external modifications, prefixes, and affixes . This may help us understand where the miraculous stroke fell on human nature at the Babel catastrophe, and thus was the “ lip,” the manner of expression, not the essential matter, changed . Historical and geographical philology furnish a most remarkable confirmation of the miracle of Babel . The fixedness and generic persistency of the great linguistic types point to a violent cleavage and projection asunder in the remotest past. The Finnish was in Northern Europe before the Celts arrived, and there it still is. It may perish, but it will never change to Slavonic. The Gaelic survives in a few patches of the British Islands, dwindling slowly away, but while it lives it will ever be Gaelic, it cannot develop into English. It is many centuries since the Shemitic, stretching through the Euphrates valley and the Arabian peninsula, clove the Aryan district asunder. But, as in the days of Solomon, the Sanscrit lay on the east and the Pelasgic on the west of the Hebrew, so to-day the same Sanscrit and its children live in the Indian peninsula, and the children of the Greek and Latin and Teutonic flourish in Europe, while the Arabic, in all its Shemitic integrity, lies between, neither family mingling with the other. (See Lewis, Excursus on Genesis 11:0 .)