Language confounded at Tower of Babel

Genesis 11:1 (KJV) And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.

2 And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.

3 And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter.

4 And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top [may reach] unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.

5 And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.

6 And the LORD said, Behold, the people [is] one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.

7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.

8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.

9 Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.


K.J. Duursma and his wife and children live in England. He has studied theology and linguistics and addresses the six thousand languages in the world today.

1. Secularists thought all languages came from one source, perhaps Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin.

2. Scripture teaches that language did not evolve but men were born speaking one language and this was broken down into many language families at the Tower of Babel.

3. Linguists now agree that there are at least 20 major family groups of languages, but any study is still incomplete because of the vastness of the subject.

4. “All languages are something of a ruin,” said Dutch linguist van der Tuuk. This is illustrated by Classical Greek, Koine Greek and Modern Greek. In English, we see highly inflected Anglo-Saxon, less so the language of Chaucer (Middle English) and finally modern English appearing about the time of the King James Bible.

5. The changes in today’s languages are not attempts to revive the complicated grammars of the past but are widespread international borrowing of words from other languages.

6. If language is going downhill in complexity and innovation is just borrowing, then any evolution of language seems impossible. The number of language families seems to conform with the truth of Scripture that God made sure that man could not communicate universally with one single language.

7. http://creation.com/the-tower-of-babel-account-affirmed-by-linguistics