Genesis 11:4-9 “And they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth." (5) But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. (6) And the Lord said, "Indeed the people are one and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do; now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them. (7) Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another's speech." (8) So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they ceased building the city. (9) Therefore its name is called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.”
Prior to the flood in the days of Noah and even a few hundred years after that event, there was only one people group in the earth. In other words there were no separate nations in the earth at that time. The principle reason for that was because as revealed in the above passage of scripture, everyone spoke a common language. And so it was as a result of the incident that occurred in the city of Babel, when men tried to give themselves a universal name, that God decided to divide mankind into different people groups or nations. As can be seen in the above quoted passage, the mechanism that God used to accomplish this was through the act of confusing their language. This action had the effect of forcing people to congregate together with those they could understand because they now shared a common language, and separating from those they could no longer understand because they now spoke, what to them was a foreign language. That concept is still prevalent in the earth today, for every nation still has its own unique language. Even among nations that speak a common language, such as English for example, it is evident that each of those nations still has its own unique dialect.
Michael E.B. Maher
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