What Does Genesis 11:7 Mean in the King James?
Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
Confusion here is a mixing of speech that breaks the hearing between people.
THE MEANING
God mixes a common language until people can no longer understand one another. Words remain, but their meaning stops crossing between speakers, and shared purpose becomes separation.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A common tongue guarantees mutual understanding; this verse shows that shared speech can cease to carry shared meaning.
THE ROOT
נָבְלָה
navlah
GROWS FROM
בלל
balal
To mix or mingle; in this passage, to confound by mixing.
“confound” in this verse is navlah. The verb comes from a root meaning to mix or mingle, and Genesis 11:9 makes the sound-link to Babel explicit. Confusion is pictured as speech mixed until a common language can no longer carry meaning between people.
ALSO GROWS
belulah: Mixed or mingled, as fine flour mixed with oil.
בְּלוּלָה
The same root describes ingredients mingled together; here, speech is mixed until it no longer communicates clearly.
Bavel: Babel, linked by the passage’s wordplay to mixing.
בָּבֶל
The name echoes the act of mixing, making the place itself a reminder of speech that no longer joins people.
יִשְׁמְעוּ
yishme'u
GROWS FROM
שמע
shama
To hear or listen; here, to understand through hearing.
The Hebrew says they will not hear one another, where the KJV says they may not understand one another. Understanding is pictured as shared hearing: the failure happens between people, not merely inside an individual’s mind.
ALSO GROWS
shemi'ah: Hearing or listening.
שְׁמִיעָה
This noun keeps understanding close to the act of hearing that the verse says has broken down.
shemu'ah: A report or news, something heard.
שְׁמוּעָה
A report travels as heard speech; the root links receiving words with making sense of them.
שְׂפָתָם
sefatam
GROWS FROM
שפה
safah
Lip or edge; by extension, language.
The Hebrew calls language “their lip,” making speech a bodily threshold where thought becomes audible to another. The same word can name an edge, so the verse pictures the boundary between people being carried at the lips.
ALSO GROWS
safah: Lip; also language.
שָׂפָה
The word joins the physical lip to the spoken language that carries meaning from one person to another.
sefat-hayam: The shore or edge of the sea.
שְׂפַת־הַיָּם
The same word names a boundary at the water’s edge, echoing how speech can mark the boundary between people who understand one another and those who do not.
THE PATTERN
When hearing breaks, shared language fractures a people into separation.
Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together, and were confounded, because that every man heard them speak in his own language.So likewise ye, except ye utter by the tongue words easy to be understood, how shall it be known what is spoken? for ye shall speak into the air.THE THREAD
Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together, and were confounded, because that every man heard them speak in his own language.This verse holds many languages together while each person hears intelligibly in their own. It reverses Genesis 11:7’s fracture: understanding crosses difference without reducing everyone to one tongue.
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