To overflow (specifically with oil.); by implication, to mix ; to fodder
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The Hebrew verb balal can mean to mix or mingle, especially grain offerings mixed with oil, and in other settings to confuse language or provide feed. Torah repeatedly uses it for prescribed mixtures of flour and oil in offerings.
Reader summary
Full entry for בָּלַל (H1101) · Open the biblical lexicon
The Hebrew verb balal can mean to mix or mingle, especially grain offerings mixed with oil, and in other settings to confuse language or provide feed. Torah repeatedly uses it for prescribed mixtures of flour and oil in offerings.
The BSB source-word alignment has 43 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include mixed (37), and confuse (1), and fed (1), confused (1), I have been anointed (1).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Genesis 11:7. Its strongest book concentrations include Numbers (27), Leviticus (9), Exodus (2), Genesis (2).
The Hebrew verb balal can mean to mix or mingle, especially grain offerings mixed with oil, and in other settings to confuse language or provide feed. Torah repeatedly uses it for prescribed mixtures of flour and oil in offerings. Genesis uses it at Babel when the Lord confuses human language and disperses a city-building project. Judges describes providing fodder for animals, while Hosea says Ephraim mixes with the nations in an accusation about compromised allegiance.
Psalm 92 uses rich oil language in praise, with translation shaped by the form and context. These senses must remain distinct. The verb does not teach that mixture is inherently impure, since commanded offerings use mixing positively. It also does not make cultural contact, multilingual life, interracial marriage, migration, or shared meals sinful. Babel concerns proud collective action and divine judgment, not a warrant for language contempt or ethnic segregation.
Responsible teaching identifies ingredients, actors, purpose, and covenant setting while rejecting food magic, xenophobia, purity ideology, and attempts to treat one mixing image as a universal moral rule.
Balal describes mixing flour with oil in offerings, confusing language at Babel, providing animal feed, and figurative mingling in prophetic accusation, with each object and setting controlling the sense.
Come, let Us go down and confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.”
The Lord announces the confusion of the builders' language so they will no longer understand one another.
That is why it is called Babel, for there the Lord confused the language of the whole world, and from that place the Lord scattered them over the face of all the earth.
Babel receives its name because the Lord confused the language and scattered the people over the earth.
Along with unleavened bread, unleavened cakes mixed with oil, and unleavened wafers anointed with oil. Make them out of fine wheat flour,
Unleavened cakes and wafers mixed or coated with oil belong to the priestly consecration provisions.
Now if you bring an offering of grain baked in an oven, it must consist of fine flour, either unleavened cakes mixed with oil or unleavened wafers coated with oil.
A baked grain offering may include unleavened cakes of fine flour mixed with oil under stated instructions.
So he brought him to his house and fed his donkeys. And they washed their feet and ate and drank.
The host brings the travelers into his house, feeds their donkeys, and provides washing, food, and drink.
Ephraim mixes with the nations; Ephraim is an unturned cake.
Hosea accuses Ephraim of mixing with the nations and compares the people to an unturned cake.
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Hebrew word. Mixing or blending substances; extends figuratively to confusion or bewilderment when elements become indistinguishably combined.
Mixing or blending substances; extends figuratively to confusion or bewilderment when elements become indistinguishably combined.
to overflow (specifically with oil.); by implication, to mix; to fodder BDB: to give provender Usage: anoint, confound, × fade, mingle, mix (self), give provender, temper.
How the stem changes the meaning of this verb across the biblical text.
This verb appears through different tense, voice, mood, or stem patterns. Those forms help readers see how the action is presented in context.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 1 selected witness from 43 lexical occurrence verses.
בָּלַל is built from this root:
Indicates loss of covenant distinctiveness.Hosea 7:8-16
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
Balal resists simplistic moral symbolism. Torah commands flour and oil to be mixed for particular offerings, so mixture cannot be inherently corrupt. Those recipes belong to Israel's worship and should not be reproduced as spiritually powerful foods. Genesis 11 uses the verb for confused language as God disrupts Babel's project and scatters its builders. The narrative explains failed mutual understanding, but it never makes one language or ethnicity superior.
Multilingual communities and translation are not reversals of holiness. Judges uses the verbal range in ordinary care for animals within hospitality. Hosea then uses mixing figuratively in an accusation about Ephraim's compromised covenant allegiance, accompanied by the image of an unturned cake. That oracle does not condemn neighbor love, migration, intermarriage across ethnicity, cultural learning, or shared civic life as such.
Faithful teaching follows the object and passage. It values careful preparation, care for creatures, patient cross-language communication, and truthful allegiance to God. It rejects xenophobia, purity politics, culinary magic, and the claim that cultural separation guarantees faithfulness.
Gen.11.9
Balal is a Hebrew verb with senses including mixing or mingling, confusing, and providing feed. Direct objects such as flour, oil, language, peoples, or fodder plus verbal stem and genre determine the translation and prevent false transfer between senses.
Acts 2 narrates multilingual proclamation without erasing languages, and the New Testament addresses table fellowship, holiness, and allegiance in its own vocabulary. Those themes can answer Babel and Hosea without making every cultural mixture a balal occurrence.