43 Why is my language not clear to you?
I've quoted this before, but someone once said, "The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has occurred." The bible is full of abstract words like; grace, sin, salvation, repentance, law, justice, etc. I notice people have a way of attaching their own understanding to words like these, and then do not realize when talking to others who are using the same words - yet attaching their own different understanding to the words - they are experiencing a very real communication breakdown. They cannot understand one anothers speech, as it were.
Interestingly, the name "Babylon" isn't really in the manuscripts of the bible, it is an English use of a different cultural name for the same locale: much as though "Egypt" is actually called "Mitzraim" in the Hebrew. But the word "Babylon" is what the translators chose to put in the place of the Hebrew word "Babel". So when we read of the "king of Babylon" in the English, it is really "king of Babel": the translators seem to have felt putting the common English name "Babylon" in place of "Babel" would spare English readers a bit of understanding, since they would be more familiar with the locale by the name "Babylon" - much in the same way they changed "Mitzraim" to "Egypt" since English redears would read of the children of Israel departing Mitzraim and may not understand where this was, and so changing it to "Egypt" allows the English reader more readily understand what country was being departed.
But, in the case of "Babylon", I feel a great disservice has been done, in that the reader now fails to understand the tie into the city and tower of Genesis 11, the beginning of the "Babel" and doesn't realize that the biblical "Babylon" is one and the same as "Babel"
The word "Babel" of course means "confusion" because it was at Babel that the languages of men were "confused" and "they could not understand one another's speech"; and when we see the name "king of Babel" it literally translates to "king of confusion"; and when we get to "Great Babylon" in the Revelation, it literally translates "Great Confusion"; carrying with it through the reason of that given at Genesis 11 for the name of the kingdom.
Genesis 11:9
Likewise, I don't think it is a coincidence that this same "confusion of language" is very present to a great degree in the churches, as they have all adopted their own understanding of the words, and now we come to a place where they "cannot understand one anothers speech" as alluded to by Jesus in the quoted verse. A great communication breakdown.
