Come, let’s go down and confuse the people with different languages. Then they won’t be able to understand each other.”
Parallel translations
- WEB Come, let’s go down, and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.”
- KJV Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.
- BSB Come, let Us go down and confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.”
- NKJV Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.”
- NASB Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.”
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
God resolved to go down and confuse their language so they could not understand one another. He acts to halt their prideful project.
Overview
Using the plural come, let us, echoing earlier divine deliberations, God determines to confound human speech. By multiplying languages, He frustrates the rebellion and enforces the scattering He had commanded. This judgment on language is graciously reversed at Pentecost, where the gospel of Christ is understood across every tongue.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 18
- Ps 33:10Yahweh brings the counsel of the nations to nothing. He makes the thoughts of the peoples to be of no effect.
- Job 5:12–13He frustrates the devices of the crafty, So that their hands can’t perform their enterprise.
- Gen 1:26God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky, and over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
- Ps 55:9Confuse them, Lord, and confound their language, for I have seen violence and strife in the city.
- 1 Cor 14:2–11For he who speaks in another language speaks not to men, but to God; for no one understands; but in the Spirit he speaks mysteries.
- 1 Cor 14:23If therefore the whole assembly is assembled together and all speak with other languages, and unlearned or unbelieving people come in, won’t they say that you are crazy?
- Acts 2:4–11They were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak with other languages, as the Spirit gave them the ability to speak.
- Gen 42:23They didn’t know that Joseph understood them; for there was an interpreter between them.
- Jer 5:15Behold, I will bring a nation on you from far, house of Israel,” says Yahweh. “It is a mighty nation. It is an ancient nation, a nation whose language you don’t know, neither understand what they say.
- Gen 3:22Yahweh God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand, and also take of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever...”
- Deut 28:49Yahweh will bring a nation against you from far, from the end of the earth, as the eagle flies; a nation whose language you will not understand;
- Ps 2:4He who sits in the heavens will laugh. The Lord will have them in derision.
- Job 12:20He removes the speech of those who are trusted, and takes away the understanding of the elders.
- Gen 10:20These are the sons of Ham, after their families, according to their languages, in their lands and their nations.
- Isa 6:8I heard the Lord’s voice, saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here I am. Send me!”
- Gen 11:5Yahweh came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men built.
- Gen 10:32These are the families of the sons of Noah, by their generations, according to their nations. The nations divided from these in the earth after the flood.
- Gen 10:5Of these were the islands of the nations divided in their lands, everyone after his language, after their families, in their nations.
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Christ at the center
From the first promise that the seed of the woman would crush the serpent (3:15), through Abraham's blessing to all nations and Judah's coming ruler, Genesis sows every seed that flowers in Christ — the true offspring, the better Adam, the ram caught for Isaac.
How Genesis 11:7 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
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