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In Genesis, everyone is described speaking a single, universal language before they are eventually confused. In Jubilees, an angel opens Abram's mouth so he can speak this lost language of creation, undoing the confusion for him.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Genesis 11:7
Hebrew Bible
5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the people had started building. 6 And the Lord said, “If as one people all sharing a common language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be beyond them. 7 Come, let’s go down and confuse their language so they won’t be able to understand each other.” 8 So the Lord scattered them from there across the face of the entire earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why its name was called Babel—because there the Lord confused the language of the entire world, and from there the Lord scattered them across the face of the entire earth.
Jubilees 12:25
Pseudepigrapha
25 Then the Lord God said to me: ‘Open his mouth and his ears to hear and speak with his tongue in the revealed language.’ For from the day of the collapse it had disappeared from the mouths of all mankind. 26 I opened his mouth, ears, and lips and began to speak Hebrew with him — in the language of the creation. 27 He took his fathers’ books (they were written in Hebrew) and copied them. From that time he began to study them, while I was telling him everything that he was unable to understand. He studied them throughout the six rainy months.
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Notes and References
“... Moreover, it is also worth noting that the scene in Jubilees continues so that God orders the Angel of Presence to teach Abram Hebrew, the revealed language of the creation which no one had spoken since the time of the Tower of Babel (Jub 12:25–27): 12:25 Then the Lord God said to me, “Open his mouth and his ears to hear and speak with his tongue in the revealed language.” For from the day of the Collapse it had disappeared from the mouth(s) of all humanity. 12:26 I opened his mouth, ears, and lips and began to speak Hebrew with him—in the language of the creation. [...] Thus, Abram could read and study the old books that, for example, Noah and Enoch (Jub 4:17; 10:13; 21:10) had written, and everything that Abram could not understand by himself was explained to him by the angel. This means that at this point Abram spoke a language no other did. Therefore, he had also access to revelation that no one else had access to. This is also an exclusive trait in the rewritten story. ...”
Tanskanen, Topias K. E.
Jacob, the Torah, and the Abrahamic Promise: Studies on the Use and Interpretation of the Jacob Story in the Book of Jubilees
(p. 147) Åbo Akademi University, 2023
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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