Verses 1 and 2 provide the background setting of the story. In languages that require that the place be named first, it may be necessary to switch verses 1 and 2.

Now the whole earth …: Now translates “And it was,” which functions here as a story opener. New English Bible takes it to be the equivalent of the English story opener, “Once upon a time,” but Revised English Bible has revised this to “There was a time when,” which removes it somewhat from the category of a pure fairy tale in English. Good News Translation has “At first…,” and this expression is suitable in many languages, because it is the natural way of referring to a time long ago. Some translations do not represent this opening form but begin with the statement “The whole earth had….”

Many languages have story openers for texts that explain how something came to be; for example, “This is the way the world once was,” or “Long ago it happened like this,” or “In the time of the ancestors it was so.” In some cases the natural structure of this type of narrative may call for something that occurs later in the biblical text to be brought to the beginning as an introduction; for example, “This is [a story about] how there came to be many languages in the world. Long ago….”

Whole earth in this context refers, as Good News Translation says, to “the people of the whole world.” We may also say “everybody in the world,” or simply “everybody.” Had one language is literally “one lip.” This does not refer to “accent” or “manner of speaking” but to the language as a means of communication. The sense is “spoke only one language” or “spoke the same language.”

Few words: this Revised Standard Version rendering is one interpretation of the Hebrew phrase. But New Revised Standard Version and most others understand the phrase to mean “the same words.” Some translations say “spoke the same language with the same vocabulary.”

The combination of “one language” and “the same words” is probably a poetic emphasis on the unity of the language the people heard spoken. Taken literally the addition of “the same words” is redundant, since two people speaking a common language use the same words. Accordingly Biblia Dios Habla Hoy says “Everybody spoke the same language.” Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch says “People still had at that time a single language.”

Quoted with permission from Reyburn, William D. and Fry, Euan McG. A Handbook on Genesis. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1997. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .