עֲשֵׂה לְךָ תֵּבַת עֲצֵי־גֹפֶר — the word for Noah's vessel, תֵּבָה, was never a specialized nautical term; the very same word names the little basket of reeds and pitch that carries the infant Moses down the Nile (Exodus 2:3). In Modern Hebrew it has stayed exactly that ordinary: a תֵּבָה is any enclosed box or case — a mailbox is a תיבת דואר, a music box a תיבת נגינה, an email inbox a תיבת דואר נכנס. The specific idiom תיבת נח keeps Noah's version alive on its own terms, though: Israelis use it for any space crammed with every conceivable kind of person or thing thrown together at once — a packed commuter train, a chaotic moving day, a fractious coalition government are all, affectionately or not, called a תיבת נח.

עַל־כֵּן קָרָא שְׁמָהּ בָּבֶל כִּי־שָׁם בָּלַל ה' שְׂפַת כָּל־הָאָרֶץ — the text supplies its own etymology: Babel (בָּבֶל) is named for the verb בָּלַל, "to confuse, to mix up." Modern Hebrew took the root and ran with it: לְבַלְבֵּל means to confuse someone, and the noun בִּלְבּוּל — built straight off the Biblical root — is the everyday word for confusion or a mix-up, with none of the original's theological weight left: a בלבול can be a scheduling mix-up, a mental fog, or a toddler's tantrum. The Hungarian psychoanalyst Sándor Ferenczi's landmark 1933 paper on childhood trauma was published in Hebrew translation under exactly this word — בלבול השפות בין המבוגרים לילד ("Confusion of Tongues Between the Adult and the Child"), held today in the National Library's catalogue — extending Babel's own confusion of tongues into a clinical term for a child mistaking an adult's language of desire for the language of tenderness.

וַאֲנִי הִנְנִי מֵבִיא אֶת־הַמַּבּוּל מַיִם עַל־הָאָרֶץ — מַבּוּל appears in the Torah nowhere outside Noah's own story (it returns only once more, in Psalms 29:10, remembering it). In Modern Hebrew it is entirely unremarkable: a מבול is any overwhelming flood — a מבול של תגובות ("a flood of responses"), a מבול של תיירים ("a flood of tourists"), a מבול של מידע ("an information deluge") — the word keeping its sense of being overwhelmed all at once while shedding its cosmic scale. In 1993 the Suzanne Dellal Centre for Dance and Theatre programmed a screening of מבול — הסרט ("The Flood — the Movie"), Ram Baruch's film of Ohad Naharin's own dance piece מבול; the surviving festival flyer, preserved in the National Library's dance archive, uses the word exactly as Genesis does — total, engulfing, and needing no further explanation.