Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9)

Genesis 10 covered the dispersal of men around Mesopotamia and the ancient near east.

In Genesis 11, we follow the actions of men as they move east.

Despite the dispersal we saw in Genesis 10, mankind is unified by a common language.

In verse 3, mankind continues to be innovative and learns how to make bricks by baking them and using bitumen for mortar.  This replaces stone as a building material.

Mankind immediately decides to start building a giant tower, which would obviously remind the ancient readers of the ziggurats of Babylonia.  The intended height for this is tower is one that "reaches to the heavens" (v. 4).

According to Robert Alter's commentary, this phrase of reaching "to the heavens" is commonly found in inscriptions of large ancient buildings found in the ancient near east.

If we combine that with the building material they used (brick), then we can probably guess that this tower was not very tall.  Rather, it is what the tower symbolized and not its height that mattered to God.

The stated purpose for this tower is not to literally reach the heavens, but to "make a name for themselves and not be scattered over the whole face of the earth.". (v. 4).  They want their names to be remembered, which could refer to inscriptions on the buildings themselves.

They also want a concentration of human population.  On one hand, this fits the anti-city theme of Genesis.  It also could represent Babylonian power overall.  The people want to be unified under one government.  This presents a threat to the ancient readers of Genesis and as we know, Babylon conquers Judah and forever becomes a symbol of evil.

Back to Genesis, God comes and disperses the people by giving them separate language.  God's stated purpose is to concern that if God does not do this, then "nothing will be impossible for" mankind.

God confuses their languages and the people cannot make sense of each other.  So, they scatter and "stop building the city", which would include working on this tower.

Like I mentioned, I read this story more of a subtle attack on the Babylonian culture.  Or, perhaps it was a reminder to the ancient Israelites that God will protect them from the major neighboring empires of the day.

But the story discusses the origin of the diversity of language, so let's consider it on its own terms.

One question that comes to mind for me is - does God fear large, or even, world-wide empires united by a common tongue?

I think that God is aware of the power that can focus into the hands of dictators.  Perhaps that is what the story is about.

But in terms of unified languages, if we consider the last few centuries of our own history, we can see the rise and fall of various international languages coinciding with rising and falling empires.  Likewise, various ethnic groups and languages serve to unite areas on a regional area.

Spanish, Portuguese, and French
There used to be a worldwide empires for Spain, Portugal, and France.  Over time, these broke up.  Many areas that were part of their respective empires are still united by speaking the colonial governments, although they have various governments.

Russian
An analogous situation happened with the case of Russia and Russian language in the 20th century.  The Russian Tsarist empire converted to the Communist Soviet empire.  When the Soviet union collapsed, it left a legacy of Russian behind.

Chinese and German
These might seem like strange languages to group together.  But I think it is fair because regional trading and colonization led to wide areas of Europe speaking German and the Far East speaking China.

If one travels around central, northern, and eastern Europe, German might be better to get around than English.

Likewise, Chinese is spoken frequently outside of mainland China.

English
English is the dominant international language today.  The supremacy of English today stems from the British Empire in the 19th century and America's emergence as the lone superpower after the collapsed of the Soviet Union.


After considering these, does God hate unified people under common languages?  I do not think so.  Rather, it is what we do with unified power that matters.


The First Pentecost (Acts 2)
No discussion of the Tower of Babel is complete without considering the first Pentecost.  There, through the Holy Spirit, God undid the language diversity from the Tower of Babel and began to unite people with language.  God did not simplify the world into one language, but rather gave people the ability to speak in other languages to communicate with other people.  This tear downs walls that separate people.