Chapter 11 continues the genealogy of Noah's sons, but not before a quick detour into the story of The Tower of Babel. This is the last of what are called the "pre-history" stories of the Bible. Up until not everything has happened in a long-ago and far-away that can't be identified with any historical time place. That will change as we get into the story of Abraham.
The story is pretty straightforward; all the people of the earth live in one place and speak one language. They decide to build a tower that will reach into heaven and proceed to build it. God sees their effort, doesn't like it, and says: "One people, one language; why, this is only a first step. No telling what they'll come up with next - they'll stop at nothing!.
God takes away the ability to communicate and scatters them across the face of the earth. This provides a (fictional) explanation for the fact that there are so many different languages in the world. As short as the story is, it raises a number of questions in our minds.
1) What was the Tower?
There have been a number of searches for the tower, especially in the 19th Century when archaeology was in its infancy and most people assumed that this was a literal story. One attractive possibility was that it was inspired by the Etemenanki which was 7 story ziggurat devoted to the god Marduk that stood in the city of Babylon. The Jews would have been seen it during the Babylinian exile when they lived as captives in Babylon.
It's impossible to know if this was the inspiration for the Tower of Babel, but it seems likely that the Tower is supposed to make us think of ziggurats. These were high places or artificial mountains created in the pagan religions of the ancient Near East. The idea was that mountains were sacred places where the earth rose up to touch the heavens. When you built a city, you would construct an artificial mountain, or ziggurat, as a central place of worship. This sounds very much like the reason the people gave for building the Tower of Babel.
2) Why did God object to the Tower?
It's not made clear in the story, though Jewish tradition suggests that it was the pride of the people. Failing to trust God, they decided to reach up to heaven on their own terms and built the Tower. This answer is similar to the story of Adam and Eve where the humans don't trust God and try to gain divin knowledge on their own terms. In both stories, falling out of harmony with God produces a disaster.
There is also a very good chance that this story was written either during the exile in Babylon or soon after. If that is the case then the Tower could represent the powerful enemies of the Jews and the ziggurats where they worshipped their gods. The story serves as a reminder that, no matter how powerful their enemies appear to be, God is in control.
3) Why did God scatter the people and give them different languages?
Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann has a wonderful insight on this in his commentary on Genesis. The Tower of Babel is a story of people who are great because of their cookie-cutter sameness. The people of Babel all speak the same language and (presumably) eat the same food, wear the same kind of clothes, and belong to the same culture. You can accomplish a great deal in a homogeneous culture but only at the expense of diversity. Brueggemann suggests that God scatters the people to show them a better way. The unity God wants for the human race is diverse people drawn together by common faith and values, not a sterile sameness.
In other words, God doesn't object to the tower, per se, but to the way it's being built. Human beings should aspire to more than being builder-ants. The many languages and the scattering are not a punishment, but an opportunityu to live up to a much greater potential.
The story shifts back to genealogy with verses 10-32. I won't touch on these other than to say that they carry us to the story of Abraham.
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