Genesis 11:9 | 29
The Tower of Babel
11
Now the whole world had one language and a com mon speech. 2 As peo ple moved east ward, a they found a plain in Shinar b u and set tled there.
3 They said to each oth er,“ Come, let’ s
make bricks v and bake them thor ough ly.” They used brick in stead of stone, and tar w for mortar. 4 Then they said,“ Come, let us build our selves a city, with a tow er that reach es to the heav ens, x so that we may make a name y for our selves; other wise we will be scat tered over the face of the whole earth.” z
5 But the Lord came down a to see the
11:2 u Ge 10:10 11:3 v Ex 1:14 w Ge 14:10
11:4 x Dt 1:28; 9:1 y Ge 6:4 z Dt 4:27
11:5 a ver 7; Ge 18:21; Ex 3:8; 19:11, 18, 20
11:7 b Ge 1:26 c Ge 42:23
11:8 d Ge 9:19; Lk 1:51 11:9 e Ge 10:10 city and the tow er the peo ple were building. 6 The Lord said,“ If as one peo ple speak ing the same lan guage they have begun to do this, then noth ing they plan to do will be im pos si ble for them. 7 Come, let us b go down and con fuse their lan guage so they will not un der stand each oth er.” c
8 So the Lord scat tered them from there
over all the earth, d and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel c e— be cause there the Lord con fused the lan guage of the whole world. From
a 2 Or from the east; or in the east b 2 That is,
Babylonia c 9 That is, Babylon; Babel sounds like the Hebrew for confused.
11:1 one language. A Sumerian epic entitled Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta speaks of a time when there was only harmony among people and“ the whole universe in unison spoke to Enlil in one tongue.” Speech was then changed and“ contention” was brought into it. Nothing else in this account parallels the tower of Babel, but it indicates that confusion of language by deity was a known theme in the ancient world. 11:2 moved eastward. Geological and hydrological studies and migration patterns discernible from the fourth and third millennia BC suggest that there was a drying out of the southern alluvial plain as the Persian Gulf receded and a corresponding population movement into that plain toward the end of the fourth millennium BC. This period, known as the Uruk Phase, features technological advances in urbanization, architecture, technology and language that correspond to elements referred to in v. 3( see note). Shinar. The Hebrew term( shinar) refers to the area that ancient Near Eastern texts refer to as Sumer. It covered the southern part of the Tigris-Euphrates River basin as far north as Sippar, where the rivers converge in the area of modern southern Iraq. Major cities of the region included Kish, Nippur, Shuruppak, Girsu, Uruk, Eridu and Ur. This is the area where urbanization developed and is the heartland of Mesopotamian civilization. 11:3 make bricks and bake them. Stone is not readily available in the alluvial plain of southern Mesopotamia, so a logical economical choice is to use brick— there is plenty of mud. Mud brick, however, is not durable, so it was a great technological development to discover that baking the brick made it as durable as stone. This was still an expensive process, since the kilns had to be fueled. As a result, mud brick was used as much as possible, with baked brick used only for outer shells of important buildings or where waterproofing was desirable. No baked bricks have been found earlier than the Uruk period( latter part of the fourth millennium BC). 11:4 a city, with a tower. One single architectural feature dominated the landscape of early Mesopotamian cities: towers known as ziggurats( see the article“ Ziggurats,” p. 30). In the earliest stages of urbanization, the city was not designed for the private sector. People did not live in the city. Instead, it was comprised of the public buildings, such as administrative buildings, and granaries, which were mostly connected with the temple. Consequently, the city was, in effect, a temple complex. reaches to the heavens. Throughout Mesopotamian literature, almost every occurrence of the expression describing a building“ with its head in the heavens” refers to a temple with a ziggurat( see the article“ Ziggurats,” p. 30). It is this language, along with the indication that God“ came down”( v. 5), that gives textual confirmation that the tower is a ziggurat. This would have been transparent to the ancient reader. In keeping with the negative results of the project here, the reader of Genesis will find a few of the omens in the Shumma Alu series remarkable:“ If a city lifts its head to the midst of heaven, that city will be abandoned”( 1.15), and“ If a city rises like a mountain peak to the midst of heaven, that city will be turned to a ruin”( 1.16). Yet Mesopotamian cities were regularly built on high ground, with the temple on the highest ground. The wording of these omens understood in the context of the omen series is essentially about exceeding natural boundaries to the effect that a city can overreach itself to rival sacred structures and thus bring about its own destruction. make a name. The ancient world placed immense value on the sense of continuity from one generation to another. In some cultures a person’ s continued comfort in the afterlife was dependent on care from descendants in the land of the living. The details often involved memorial meals and various regular mortuary rites, but more important for this passage, they provided opportunity for the name of the deceased to be spoken. There is continued life and vitality as long as one is remembered. The building of monuments could also contribute to the desirable end result, as could achievements and adventures of various sorts. The important point here is that the desire to make a name in the ancient world is common to all. The more people who remember one’ s name, the more secure is one’ s existence in the afterlife. While there is nothing inherently evil or sinful in the desire to be remembered( e. g., God promises to“ make your name great” for Abraham in 12:2 and David in 2Sa 7:9), this desire may become obsessive or motivate evil or sinful behavior. scattered. The fear of scattering is directly related( both syntactically and conceptually) to the previously stated desire to make a name. Remembrance takes place in the vicinity of the burial ground. Descendants who move away( as Abraham does in ch. 12) cut the ties of continuity between the past and the present. Though some have considered this desire not to scatter as disobedience to the blessing in 1:28, it must be recognized that the blessing does not relate to scattering, only to filling— far different issues. God scattered them, not because it was wrong for them to be together, but because their desire to retain continuity was causing them to launch flawed strategies. 11:5 the Lord came down. Precisely the reason the tower was built— for God to come down( see the article“ Ziggurats,” p. 30). Unfortunately, rather than being pleased to take up his residence among the people, God finds it an occasion for counteraction. Rather than being pleased at the convenience, he is distressed by the pagan concepts inherent in the nature of the ziggurat.