What language did Adam and Eve speak?
Scripture never gives the name of the language Adam and Eve spoke, and the commentators are careful not to invent one. What the Bible does tell us is where speech came from, what the first man did with it, and how long the human race kept a single tongue.
Speech Was a Gift, Not an Invention
The first thing said about human language in these writings is that it did not develop slowly out of grunts and imitation. It arrived with the man himself.
William KellyLanguage was in no way the slow invention of man's wit, but an immediate endowment of our first parents by God from creation. His word assures us of its reality from the first day of man's creation; and everything confirms it in the chapters that follow.
The Evidence in Genesis
Two ordinary events in the opening chapters show speech already working in both directions — God to man, and man to the world around him.
W. W. FeredayThere was language from the first. God spoke to the man and his wife (Gen. 1:28-30) and the man spoke to the beasts, and so on, in giving them all their names (Gen. 2:20).
The naming of the animals was not baby talk. It shows a mind and a vocabulary already at full strength.
F. B. HoleAdam was clearly at the height of his intellectual powers before they had been in any way tarnished by sin. He was able to discern in each case the characteristic feature, so as to give the suitable name, for the names were of course descriptive and not just fancy words meaning nothing. Adam had both intellect and language, with command of speech.
Was It Hebrew?
Here the writers hold back. The question is asked directly, and answered honestly.
A. J. PollockWe sometimes wonder how language first came into existence. One can only come to the conclusion that at first it was the miraculous gift of a kind Creator to our first parents. Was it the Hebrew language? We cannot tell.
Commentators differ on how close Hebrew stands to that first speech. One is willing to guess at a family resemblance, while still admitting the original words are lost to us.
Frederick W. GrantAdam possessed no language but his own, and could not hide in grand Greek, as our zoologists do now, the emptiness of a meaningless name. Could we recall, as we cannot now, those first names, we should surely find convincing proof that Adam was a full-grown man… Indeed, the Hebrew names, which must be no very distant kin to Adam's, may well contain plenty of treasure in this way awaiting the explorer.
Claiming to speak the original tongue has long been a matter of national pride rather than evidence. Kelly notes how peoples across the world have made exactly this boast:
William KellyEast or west, men set up claims to be native to their soil from the first, sprung from their own ground; and if they believed that man was an outcast from Paradise, then in forms disguised by pride, setting up to speak the original language of our first parents.
One Tongue Until Babel
Whatever Adam spoke, his descendants kept speaking it for a very long time — through the flood and beyond, until God broke it up at the tower of Babel.
C. E. StuartIn the beginning it was not so, nor for some time after the Flood was there any language but one. For all sprang from a common ancestry. All spoke the language of the original parent. That this was the case, the inspired record in Genesis states. "Now the whole earth had one language and the same words" (Gen. 11:1).
The First Words We Can Still Read
Two of Adam's own words survive, carried over into the Hebrew text, and both turn on sound and sense together.
The Bible TreasuryIt was Adam before the fall who called the woman Ishah, because she was taken out of Ish. It was Adam, after the fall but also after the revelation of the woman's Seed, who called his wife's name Eve (Chavvah), because she was the mother of all living. Unbelief might naturally have called her Death, as the mother of all dying. But Adam looked in faith for her Seed.
Summary
- Given. Speech was not built up by human effort over ages; it was handed to the first pair by God on the first day of man's life.
- Used. God spoke to them and they understood; Adam answered by naming every creature with words that described what he saw.
- Unnamed. The Bible never tells us which language it was, and the honest answer to "was it Hebrew?" is that we cannot tell — though Hebrew may be a near relative.
- Shared. That one tongue held the whole race together right through to Babel, where God confounded it and scattered them.
- Preserved. Two of Adam's words reach us still — Ishah for the woman taken out of man, and Eve, a name of life spoken in faith after death had entered.