Q. Been doing an in depth study on the Bible. Came across a series of questions from Genesis. Genesis 10:5 says there are multiple clans with multiple languages, but Genesis 11:1 says the whole earth had 1 language. Could you clear this up?
Genesis 11 picks up the biblical narrative where Genesis 9 leaves off. Genesis 10 is an insertion, a genealogy, that describes the descendants of Noah’s sons before the narrative moves on from Noah and his family. So when Genesis 10 describes various languages, this means the languages that those descendants came to speak after the Tower of Babel episode, which follows the genealogy in the book but not in time.
Author: Christopher R Smith
The Rev. Dr. Christopher R. Smith is an an ordained minister, a writer, and a biblical scholar. He was active in parish and student ministry for twenty-five years. He was a consulting editor to the International Bible Society (now Biblica) for The Books of the Bible, an edition of the New International Version (NIV) that presents the biblical books according to their natural literary outlines, without chapters and verses. His Understanding the Books of the Bible study guide series is keyed to this format. He was also a consultant to Tyndale House for the Immerse Bible, an edition of the New Living Translation (NLT) that similarly presents the Scriptures in their natural literary forms, without chapters and verses or section headings.
He has a B.A. from Harvard in English and American Literature and Language, a Master of Arts in Theological Studies from Gordon-Conwell, and a Ph.D. in the History of Christian Life and Thought, with a minor concentration in Bible, from Boston College, in the joint program with Andover Newton Theological School.
View all posts by Christopher R Smith
What is the biblical evidence for that?
The Pentateuch (the “Books of Moses,” Genesis through Deuteronomy) is clearly structured by an alternation between historical narrative and other types of writing (genealogy, law, poetry, etc.). Those other types of writing do not necessarily continue the sequence of the narrative. Typically there is a header signaling to readers that this is happening. Consider, for example, Numbers 33, which begins, “Here are the stages in the journey of the Israelites when they came out of Egypt by divisions under the leadership of Moses and Aaron.” This list of stages begins at the city of Ramses in Egypt, even though, by this point in the narrative, the Israelites have reached the plains of Moab on the east side of the Jordan (Numbers 22:1). The inserted material is out of order historically (in this case, it starts in the past), but it provides a summary of the action that orients readers. The list of nations in Genesis 10 has a similar heading that signals to readers that it is an insertion: “This is the account of Shem, Ham and Japheth, Noah’s sons, who themselves had sons after the flood.” This material is out of order historically (in this case, it describes later events), not only in describing different languages, but in describing different locations where people settled. But this inserted material also orients readers by telling them how people groups and places that they are familiar with fit into the story. When the narrative resumes in Genesis 11, not only are all people speaking one language, they are all living in the same place. Genesis 10 anticipates the twin outcomes of Genesis 11: “let us go down and confuse their language … the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth.”