6 The Tower of Babel Genesis 11

6

The Tower of Babel Read Genesis ıı

Therefore it was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth. Genesis ıı:9

We are always curious as to why things are the way they are. Why is the sky blue? How does water freeze? Why does the moon shine more brightly on some nights than on others? The story of the Tower of Babel could have begun as an answer to such a question: Why do people speak in so many diverse languages?

The setting of the story is the city of Babylon, the city to which the Jews were brought after the Babylonian conquest of Judah in 597–587 BC. Babylon was a city built of bricks and mortar. There was no natural stone in Babylonia (present-day Iraq), so people made bricks of clay baked in kilns.

The inspiration for the story of the tower may have come from the shape of the pagan temples in Babylon. The principal temples of worship in Babylonia were the ziggurats, pyramidlike structures built to resemble mountains. There was usually a sanctuary on the ground level of the ziggurat that was matched

by a sanctuary at the top, where the deities were worshiped. The believers climbed in procession to the top of the pyramid to pray to their gods.

The story of the Tower of Babel begins with the statement that “The whole earth had one language and the same words” (Genesis 11:1). Now as the people moved east, they found a place to build a city on the Mesopotamian plain, in Shinar, the name for Babylonia (Genesis 11:2). The people said they would settle there and move no further: “Then they said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth’” (Genesis 11:4).

Making a name for themselves meant being independent of God and not following his plan that they multiply and fill the earth (Genesis 9:7).

God came down to see the city and discovered the people’s plan. God was not pleased to see that the people did not wish to grow but wanted to control their own destiny and use their creative talents only for themselves. God decided to confuse their language so they could not understand one another. As a result, the people scattered, and God’s will for the human race to grow and multiply moved forward (Genesis 11:9).

God made sure that the people would be more than a single isolated community. God intends for people to use their creativity to complete the earth, not to selfishly build their own private worlds; God does not support a community in which people live in cliques. The community that God wants on earth is one that cares about the entire world.

CCC, 57: Social disunity