The Babel Syndrome

“Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.”  Genesis 11:7  NASB

Confuse – When you listen to someone speak, what do you hear?  Sounds, of course.  Usually sounds that make up words that make up thoughts.  But other than the audio signals, do you hear the meaning of those sounds?  I live in Italy.  I don’t speak Italian very well.  Even the smallest conversations leave me with only audio sounds, not meanings.  I don’t know the vocabulary and the syntax well enough . . . but I can learn.  I can learn to hear the definitions of these sounds, but doesn’t that mean I know what the speaker intends?  If an Italian says, “Non vedo l’ora,” do I hear “I’m so excited” instead of “I don’t see the hour.”  This common idiom makes no literal sense in English.  I hear, but I don’t understand.  These days I wonder if the whole world isn’t caught in the Babel syndrome—hearing but not understanding, even if you speak the same language.

We have often investigated paradigms and their effect on biblical translations.  The unconscious assumptions of the translator often alter the meaning of the original text.  Sometimes we’re shocked at how much things are changed, but we shouldn’t be.  Each one of us has a paradigm, a way of looking at the world, a set of assumptions about the meaning of things.  Native language has a lot to do with paradigm formation.  So does personal development, community, family, orientation—all these and more affect how we think about the world.  Until we articulate them clearly, we’re subject to their influence without even realizing it.  This seems to be the case with politics today.  It appears that the paradigms of left and right are so internally absorbing that we just don’t understand the other even if we use the same vocabulary.  For example, “an attack on democracy” has completely different meanings according to one’s political persuasion.  Without deep paradigm articulation, real conversation is impossible.  We just talk past each other, always believing that we are right and the other side is just obtuse.  Which brings us to Babel.

Babel is about what I hear and understand.  It isn’t necessary to imagine that God altered the speech of everyone so that they heard foreign languages.  It’s only necessary to imagine that paradigms shifted so that even the same words now had different meanings.  Babel might be about foreign languages, but today the Babel syndrome is about hearing only my own meanings instead of the other’s, and in particular, hearing only what I want to hear, not God’s words.

Why did God decide to “confuse” the language?  The Hebrew verb, bālal, is about “mixing” things together.  The noun (tebel) is only used two times, and in both cases it is about mixing up God’s divine order regarding sexual relations.  In other words, confusing what God has established is essentially “babel.”  In the case of the Tower, God established the prime directive, i.e., be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth, but men did not spread out.  Men attempted to build something that would reach up to God instead of across the creation.  This needed correction; correction which required a biblical pun.  What they mixed up, God mixed up more in order to force His intention.  Maybe we also need a biblical pun.  Perhaps we need to un-mix our own mixed up confusion, and the only way to do that seems to be with divine intervention.  Otherwise, we just might be committing the Babel mistake, hearing only what we want to hear.

Topical Index: Babel, bālal, mixing, Genesis 7:11