What Does Genesis 11:1 Mean?
And the whole earth had one lip, and one set of words.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.THE KEY
The verse’s hidden hinge is that humanity shares not just one language but one field of words through which a common world becomes speakable.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks to the human world you inhabit now: shared words make understanding and coordinated life possible. Common speech gives people a way to name what is happening together, making language part of the bond between them.
THE ROOT
דְּבָרִים
devarim
GROWS FROM
ד־ב־ר
ד־ב־ר (d-b-r; dabar): speak; as a noun, a word or matter.
“one set of words” in this verse is devarim. The verse names speech with דְּבָרִים (devarim, “words”), from ד־ב־ר (d-b-r; dabar, “speak / word / matter”). In Hebrew, davar can name both a spoken word and a matter or thing, so shared speech is also a shared way to name what matters and coordinate around it.
ALSO GROWS
davar: Word; matter or thing.
דָּבָר
This noun’s range brings language and the matters people speak about into the same word-family.
dibber: Spoke; speak.
דִּבֵּר
The verb and noun share the root, linking the act of speaking with the words and matters that speech carries.
שָׂפָה
safah
GROWS FROM
שׂ־פ־ה
שׂ־פ־ה (s-f-h; safah): lip; the same Hebrew word also means language and can mean an edge or bank.
The Hebrew word is שָׂפָה (safah, “lip”) and also means “language”; its range extends to an edge or bank. The line’s “one language” begins at the mouth: what passes across the lip becomes the shared speech of the whole earth.
ALSO GROWS
safah: Lip.
שָׂפָה
This is the concrete body-word underneath the KJV’s “language.”
safah: Language; speech shared by a people.
שָׂפָה
The same word names the means by which people understand one another.
safah: Edge or bank.
שָׂפָה
This sense adds an image of a boundary or meeting edge to the word that also names the lip and language.
THE PATTERN
Shared understanding turns speech into common action, whether people begin with one language or hear one another across many.
And the LORD said, Look, they are one people, and they have all one lip; and this is what they begin to do. And now nothing they have devised to do will be walled off from them.For then I will turn to the peoples a clean lip, that they may all call in the nature of the LORD, to serve him with one shoulder.When this voice arose, the crowd came together and was poured into confusion, because each one heard them speaking in his own tongue.THE THREAD
By the word of the LORD the heavens are made, and all their host by the breath of his mouth.Genesis calls the shared speech דְּבָרִים (devarim, “words”), from ד־ב־ר (d-b-r; dabar, “speak / word / matter”); Psalm 33:6 uses that same root in “the word” of the LORD. The shared root opens a striking scale: speech gives a human community common ground, while the LORD’s word is pictured as making the heavens.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us