RESOURCES
5-144000
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
Y
Z
|
Parashat Hashavuah
Posted by Lev/Christopher on October 28, 2008 at 2:06am in Torah Studies

Noach - נח : "Noah"
Torah : Genesis 6:9-11:32
Haftarah : Isaiah 54:1-55:5
Gospel : Matthew 3-4
One Language
Thought for the Week
Legend says that when God spoke the Torah at Mount Sinai, He spoke it in the seventy languages of mankind so that all humanity might hear and understand the summons. The Bible says that when He gave the Spirit at Pentecost, the Gospel was given utterance in all languages. Even today, the Word of God is still being translated into the languages of all humankind. Very soon there will be no spoken language on earth where the Gospel is not proclaimed
Commentary
Now the whole earth used the same language and the same words. (Genesis 11:1)
At the tower of Babel, God descended to confuse the languages and disperse the peoples. The Torah uses two different words for language. Both "lip" and "tongue" are employed to indicate language. Thus, to say that a person "speaks in tongues" is to say "he speaks multiple languages." Genesis 11:1 literally says, "And it was that all the earth was one lip." Had our apostolic writers chosen this Hebrew term for language (lip) we would today wonder over the Acts 2 phenomenon of "speaking in lips."
The sages believed that the original language (lip or tongue) of all mankind was Hebrew. Hebrew, after all, is the language with which God created the heavens and the earth. In Rabbinic literature, Hebrew is called the tongue of angels and the "Holy Tongue." Rabbinic idiom considers Hebrew as the "one tongue" as opposed to the "seventy tongues" of the nations of mankind.
If I speak with the tongues of men [the seventy languages of the nations] and of angels [Hebrew], but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. (1 Corinthians 13:1)
Of course there are more than seventy spoken languages, and linguists assure us that Hebrew is not the mother tongue of humanity, but is itself a descendent of an earlier Semitic original. Nevertheless, Hebrew is a holy language. It is the language of the Torah, the language of the Scriptures, the language of the prayers and the language of Israel.
At Bible, the seventy nations were divided; the one tongue was split into many tongues. Yet as God beckons man to enter into His eternal and true Kingdom, the effects of the tower of Babel are being reversed. Hebrew is the only language in human history to have ever been resurrected from the dead. In the last century, Hebrew came back into common use after thousands of years of disuse. Other dead languages remain the exclusive domain of scholars and linguists. Hebrew alone has seen a miraculous rebirth. It is now the language of holy rabbis and Israeli taxi-cab drivers alike.
The advent of the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth institutes a return to the single tongue of Hebrew. The prophet Zephaniah foretold that all mankind will return to the use of a single language, a "pure lip," thereby reversing the punishment of the tower of Babel. Hebrew is the language of the Kingdom.
For then I will give to the peoples a pure lip, that all of them may call on the name of YHWH, to serve Him shoulder to shoulder. (Zephaniah 3:9)
-
Reply by Lev/Christopher on October 28, 2008 at 2:13am
-
-
|
This page was created on 5 May 2010
Updated on 5 May 2010
Copyright © 1987-2010 NCCG - All Rights Reserved
|
|