Noach 5784 - Confusion and Consequence in Language

(1) Everyone on earth had the same language and the same words. (2) And as they migrated from the east, they came upon a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there. (3) They said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and burn them hard.”—Brick served them as stone, and bitumen served them as mortar.— (4) And they said, “Come, let us build us a city, and a tower with its top in the sky, to make a name for ourselves; else we shall be scattered all over the world.” (5) Adonai came down to look at the city and tower that humanity had built, (6) and Adonai said, “If, as one people with one language for all, this is how they have begun to act, then nothing that they may propose to do will be out of their reach. (7) Let us, then, go down and confound their speech there, so that they shall not understand one another’s speech.” (8) Thus Adonai scattered them from there over the face of the whole earth; and they stopped building the city. (9) That is why it was called Babel, because there Adonai confounded* the speech of the whole earth; and from there Adonai scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

*confounded Heb. balal “confound,” play on “Babel.”

'ויפץ ה, G’d did not scatter the people by physically depositing them in different parts of the earth. By mixing up their languages, the people themselves started moving away from one another, in accordance with their ability to understand one another, Seeing that they were unable to communicate with one another coherently, their building project had to be aborted at any rate. The dispersal process was gradual, as methods of transportation were severely limited.