Security and the Art of Translation

(1) Everyone on earth had the same language and the same words. (2) And as they migrated from the east, they came upon a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there. (3) They said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and burn them hard.”—Brick served them as stone, and bitumen served them as mortar.— (4) And they said, “Come, let us build us a city, and a tower with its top in the sky, to make a name for ourselves; else we shall be scattered all over the world.” (5)ה׳ came down to look at the city and tower that humanity had built, (6) and ה׳ said, “If, as one people with one language for all, this is how they have begun to act, then nothing that they may propose to do will be out of their reach. (7)Let us, then, go down and confound their speech there, so that they shall not understand one another’s speech.”

[AND OF ONE SPEECH.] Unlike today, when there are words which not everybody speaking a given language will understand, the learned and the ignorant in those days spoke alike. Achadim (one) is the plural of echad.

...And the same words - The text did not explain what those words were, rather, it leaves as a hint, as explained in midrashim. But the words themselves are not explained by the text, it just tells us that they were the same words, to teach us that it wasn't because of the content of the words themselves that the Holy One of Blessing was distressed. They were what they were, and in its simplicity there is not sin, and on the contrary all appears well. But here what happened is that all thought the same thing, and this came to be the problem of the settlement.

ונעשה לנו שם, “and let us make a name for ourselves.” They referred to establishing a reputation of grandeur vis a vis any other creatures.

And we will make a name for ourselves - people were set up to watch and be in charge of the thing, and they were army chiefs in charge of punishing those who would cross, since if this is not the case there would be no need for the tower. And all that was due to fear/suspicion.

הן עם אחד BEHOLD, THEY ARE ONE PEOPLE — They possess all the advantage of being one people and of having one language common to all of them, and this is what they begin to do!

§ Rabbi Yoḥanan says: They place on the Great Sanhedrin only men of high stature, and of wisdom, and of pleasant appearance, and of suitable age so that they will be respected. And they must also be masters of sorcery, i.e., they know the nature of sorcery, so that they can judge sorcerers, and they must know all seventy languages in order that the Sanhedrin will not need to hear testimony from the mouth of a translator in a case where a witness speaks a different language.

From the mouth of the interpreter: So that when foreign-speaking witnesses came to testify before them, they did not have to contend with the doubters among them that this was hearsay.

(21) At that time, when Mordecai was sitting in the palace gate, Bigthan and Teresh, two of the king’s eunuchs who guarded the threshold, became angry, and plotted to do away with King Ahasuerus.

In the inner courtyard, and the scripture did not mention why they were angry and how Mordecai knew this, and some say that he was from the Sanhedrin and knew seventy languages, and this is the reason Mordecai is called Balshan, and there is no reason for a him to be called Balshan )linguist), but only if one person...

It also happened that King Ptolemy assembled seventy-two elders and placed them in seventy-two [separate] rooms without telling them the reason for which he had assembled them. He then went to each one of them and said to him, ‘Write for me [a translation of] the Torah of Moses your master’. The Omnipresent inspired them and the mind of all of them was identical, ...