It will not come as a surprise to you when I tell you that my dog does not speak. Bear, my one-year-old Portuguese Waterdog, does bark, of course. Sometimes, Bear barks extensively. That is because of Bearʻs reactivity. According to the American Kennel Club, dogs, who respond to common occurrences with excessive levels of arousal, are deemed reactive. Reasons for reactivity can be genetic, lack of early socialization, traumatic experiences, fear and frustration or a mix of these. In public, Bear barks and lunges when he encounters people, other dogs, cars, sometimes even birds or statues. At home, without triggers, Bear does not bark much.
With me, Bear mostly communicates through thought and gaze. He sits in front of me, and looks at me, and waits. And somehow, I know what he wants. I admit, there are not too many options: go potty, be fed, play, walk, be trained, so I might very well be guessing, or just knowing from the time of the day, but to me it feels as if I am reading his thoughts. And this works the other way around as well. While Bear does listen to his name and some commands, it sometimes feels like he can read my thoughts and certainly my feelings.
I am telling you about my dog, just to make the point that spoken language is overrated. There are many ways to communicate with people and animals, and with words is just one of them. Words can be very useful, insightful, and beautiful, don’t get me wrong! I love reading books; I love writing sermons and essays and stories. Nothing is better for intellectual engagement than words. But with emotional engagement, I’m not so sure. I suppose I’d give the language of music higher ratings in that respect. Music has a way of transporting meaning directly into your soul. And body language gives much better cues than words in respect to how people relate to each other, how much good will they have for each other.
I ask you to keep in mind how many different ways to communicate we have at our disposal when we now turn to the bible story called: The Tower of Babel. All people share one language. They are moving East, presumably to be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth as God commanded in Genesis 1, verse 28. But then they decide to settle in the plain in Shinar and to build a city with a high tower. The say to each other:
Come, let us build ourselves a city with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves, otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth” (Genesis 11:4, NRSV).
One well-known interpretation of this story is that God punishes the builders of the tower for their pride and hubris by making many languages out of one and scattering the people from their place of oneness into the diaspora. That same interpretation then connects the tower of Babel to the Day of Pentecost at which the first ‘Christians’ are suddenly able to speak in all the languages of the people around them. That interpretation sees ‘Pentecost’ as ‘solution’ for the ‘problem’ of Babel.
There are a variety of reasons why I view this interpretation with caution. Firstly, it turns diversity into a divine punishment. Throughout the book of Genesis, however, God scatters people as a means to fill the earth. This is what he commands Adam and Eve when he expulses them from paradise. He repeats the command to Noah and his family after the flood:
Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth (Genesis 9:1, NRSV).
God scattered the people of Babel from there over all the earth(Genesis 11: 8-9).And God sends Abram out from his country to be a blessing for all peoples on earth (Genesis 12:1-3). God creates many languages in Babel. He does not create a monotone, one-language, one-culture earth; God creates diversity, on purpose.
Secondly, at the day of Pentecost, in Jerusalem, the early disciples and witnesses are not suddenly united in ONE language again. No, Pentecost is an affirmation and celebration of diversity. Instead of being suddenly ‘reduced’ to one language alone, the disciples gain the ability to converse in a multitude of languages they have not known before. They are enriched by diversity; and most of those who hear them are touched to hear the message of the love of God in Jesus Christ in their own language; so much so that they ask to be baptized shortly after. So, diversity is viewed as a gift at Pentecost. And the important thing is not one language over another language, but the Good News about Jesus Christ, which can be shared in all languages!
Miller, Mary Jane. Pentecost (A Second Version), 2008, Mexico, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=59681 [retrieved June 6, 2025]. Original source: Mary Jane Miller, https://www.millericons.com/.
We cannot be sure of the exact time when the story of the Tower of Babel was put into writing. We do know that the project of collecting a variety of holy texts from many sources and making them into one Hebrew bible happened during the Babylonian exile in the 6th century BC. The Hebrew word used for Babel is the same word, which is used for Babylon in other places. To the Israelites, Babylon is the power, which forced them away from independent living on their own land into forced labor for the empire. A significant feature of Babylonian temples is the temple tower, or ziggurat, a stepped, mountain shaped structure with its top in the heavens (Gen 11:4), which is a common description of a temple tower. Its function is to enable communication between earth and heaven. What if this story critiques the concentrated power of the Babylonian Empire under which the Israelites suffer? What if it symbolizes the wish of the oppressed to shatter the Babylonian chains and to see the oppressors scattered out of power?
Other interpretations are possible, of course. Words, when combined into myths and stories, and even historical accounts; words carry multiple levels of meaning, multiple avenues of interpretation. In the New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary we read about the people of Babel:
An isolationist view of their place in the world, centered on self-preservation, puts the rest of the creation at risk. The building project thus understeps rather than oversteps human limits (NIBC 2015, 1/91).
The people of Babel turn in on themselves, it seems, and away from the larger world. But God made this world an interconnected whole, and he commands his people to fill the earth and bless all that is on it. To fill and bless. Not fill and conquer.
God loves the world and all her peoples. There is it, the one thing that matters: Love. If love motivates our communication, then it really doesn’t matter that much, what means we make use of. We share love with words, gestures, actions, and attitudes. It results in trust, joy, service, gratitude, courage, and compassion. Love is powerful. It overcomes obstacles like high towers, foreign languages, and misunderstandings. Always know: God loves you, no matter what.
