But of those who glory in their iniquities, the Lord said “behold there is one race and one lip of them all” (Gen. 11:5), that is, behold they are one connexion of family and fellowship of race, and again all have the same harmony and fellowship of voice; there is none whose mind is a stranger to the other nor his voice discordant. It is so also with men who have no gift of music. Sometimes their vocal organ, though every note is entirely tuneless and highly unmelodious, is supremely harmonized to produce disharmony, with a consonance which it turns to mere dissonance. And the same studied regularity may be noticed in fever. For the recurrences which are called in the medical schools quotidian, or tertian, or quartan, make their visitation about the same hour of the day or night and maintain their relative order. The words “And they have begun to do this” (Gen. 11:6), express strong scorn and indignation. They mean that the miscreants, not content with making havoc of the justice due to their fellows, went further. They dared to attack the rights of heaven, and having sown injustice, they reaped impiety. Yet the wretches had no profit of it. For while in wronging each other they achieved much of what they wished and their deeds confirmed what their senseless scheming had devised, it was not so with their impiety. For the things that are God’s cannot be harmed or injured, and when these reprobates turn their transgressions against them, they attain but to the beginning and never arrive at the end. Therefore we have these words, “They have begun to do.” For when, insatiate in wrongdoing, they had taken their fill of sins against all that is of earth and sea and air whose allotted nature is to perish, they bethought them to turn their forces against the divine natures in heaven. But on them nothing that exists can usually have any effect save evil speech, though indeed even the foul tongue does not work harm to those who are its objects (for they still possess their nature unchanged), but only brings disasters beyond cure on the revilers. Yet that they only began and were unable to reach the end of their impiety is no reason why they should not be denounced as they would had they carried out all their intentions. Therefore he speaks of their having completed the tower, though they had not done so. “The Lord,” he says, “came down to see the city and tower which they had built” already, not which they intended to build (Gen. 11:5).
On the Confusion of Tongues 29
Tap any verse to see what it echoes — and start a chain or echo from it.