Why did God make different languages?
"[God said,] 'Come. Let us go down and mix up their language. Then they will not understand each other'" (Genesis 11:7).
"The LORD mixed up the language of the whole world there. That’s why the city was named Babel. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth" (Genesis 11:9).
God made other languages because people were disobeying Him.When God first made people, everyone spoke the same language. No one had any trouble understanding one another (Genesis 11:1). God commanded the people to "Have children and increase your numbers. Fill the earth" (Genesis 9:1).
Sadly, though, people later decided they should stay in one place and build a great city named Babel with a tower as high as the sky. The people were starting to work together to do things that didn’t please God.
Because of this, God decided to mix up everyone’s language. He created new languages, and different people began speaking these languages. People couldn’t understand each other anymore! Groups of them had to move away to different parts of the world and start their own cultures (Genesis 11:8).
Now we have hundreds of different languages. God created these languages because of sin, but that doesn’t mean different languages are bad. They make us different from each other, and have helped us to fill the whole world. It can be fun to learn a new language so you can easily talk to someone from another part of the world. And it’s important for some people, like missionaries, to learn new languages so they can tell people from different cultures about the good news of salvation.
