Christendom and the Nations

by James B Jordan

The word translated language in this verse actually means lip. The phrase “same words” (sometimes translated "speech") refers to language, but the phrase “one lip” refers to religion. For instance, commenting on the Tower of Babel, the prophet Zephaniah wrote: “For at that time I will change the speech of the peoples to a pure speech [lip] that all of them may call upon the name of Yahweh” (Zeph. 3:9, ESV). The third and only other place in English Bibles where the Hebrew lip is mistranslated as “language” is Psalm 81:4-5, where again it clearly refers to religious confession, not to a foreign language: “For it is a statute for Israel, a rule of the God of Jacob. He made it a decree in Joseph when he went out over the land of Egypt. I hear a language [lip] I had not known" (ESV, emphasis mine).