When, therefore, we look for the city of God in these seventy-two nations, we cannot affirm that while they had but one lip, that is, one language, the human race had departed from the worship of the true God, and that genuine godliness had survived only in those generations which descend from Shem through Arphaxad and reach to Abraham; but from the time when they proudly built a tower to heaven, a symbol of godless exaltation, the city or society of the wicked becomes apparent.Whether it was only disguised before, or non-existent; whether both cities remained after the flood,--the godly in the two sons of Noah who were blessed, and in their posterity, and the ungodly in the cursed son and his descendants, from whom sprang that mighty hunter against the Lord,--is not easily determined.For possibly--and certainly this is more credible--there were despisers of God among the descendants of the two sons, even before Babylon was founded, and worshippers of God among the descendants of Ham.Certainly neither race was ever obliterated from earth.For in both the Psalms in which it is said, "They are all gone aside they are altogether become filthy; there is none that doeth good, no, not one," we read further, "Have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge? who eat up my people as they eat bread, and call not upon the Lord."1 There was then a people of God even at that time.And therefore the words, "There is none that doeth good, no, not one," were said of the sons of men, not of the sons of God.For it had been previously said, "God looked down from heaven upon the sons of men, to see if any understood and sought after God;" and then follow the words which demonstrate that all the sons of men, that is, all who belong to the city which lives according to man, not according to God, are reprobate.
CHAP.II.--THAT THE ORIGINAL LANGUAGE IN USE AMONG MEN WAS THAT WHICHWAS
AFTERWARDS CALLED HEBREW, FROM HEBER, IN WHOSE FAMILY IT WAS PRESERVEDWHEN
THE CONFUSION OF TONGUES OCCURRED.
Wherefore, as the fact of all using one language did not secure the absence of sin-infected men from the race,--for even before the deluge there was one language, and yet all but the single family of just Noah were found worthy of destruction by the flood, --so when the nations, by a prouder godlessness, earned the punishment of the dispersion and the confusion of tongues, and the city of the godless was called Confusion or Babylon, there was still the house of Heber in which the primitive language of the race survived.And therefore, as I have already mentioned, when an enumeration is made of the sons of Shem, who each founded a nation, Heber is first mentioned, although he was of the fifth generation from Shem.And because, when the other races were divided by their own peculiar languages, his family preserved that language which is not unreasonably believed to have been the common language of the race, it was on this account thenceforth named Hebrew.For it then became necessary to distinguish this language from the rest by a proper name; though, while there was only one, it had no other name than the language of man, or human speech, it alone being spoken by the whole human race.Some one will say: If the earth was divided by languages in the days of Peleg, Heber's son, that language, which was formerly common to all, should rather have been called after Peleg.But we are to understand that Heber himself gave to his son this name Peleg, which means Division; because he was born when the earth was divided, that is, at the very time of the division, and that this is the meaning of the words, "In his days the earth was divided."2 For unless Heber had been still alive when the languages were multiplied, the language which was preserved in his house would not have been called after him.We are induced to believe that this was the primitive and common language, because the multiplication and change of languages was introduced as a punishment, and it is fit to ascribe to the people of God an immunity from this punishment.Nor is it without significance that this is the language which Abraham retained, and that he could not transmit it to all his descendants, but only to those of Jacob's line, who distinctively and eminently constituted God's people, and received His covenants, and were Christ's progenitors according to the flesh.In the same way, Heber himself did not transmit that language to all his posterity, but only to the line from which Abraham sprang.And thus, although it is not expressly stated, that when the wicked were building Babylon there was a godly seed remaining, this indistinctness is intended to stimulate research rather than to elude it.For when we see that originally there was one common language, and that Heber is mentioned before all Shem's sons, though he belonged to the fifth generation from him, and that the language which the patriarchs and prophets used, not only in their conversation, but in the authoritative language of Scripture, is called Hebrew, when we are asked where that primitive and common language was preserved after the confusion of tongues, certainly, as there can be no doubt that those among whom it was preserved were exempt from the punishment it embodied.what other ?
suggestion can we make, than that it survived in the family of him whose name it took, and that this is no small proof of the righteousness of this family, that the punishment with which the other families were visited did not fall upon it?