(This answer was originally posted here.)
The record of the tower of Babel is one of the most well known but most misunderstood passages of the Bible. People remember in general terms the great tower, man’s challenge to God, and the confusion of language, but they usually remember the specific details imperfectly.
It’s a short record (Gen. 11:1-9), so let’s read it now so we know what it actually says:
Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. {2} And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. {3} And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. {4} 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, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.” {5} And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. {6} And the LORD said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. {7} Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.” {8} So the LORD dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. {9} Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth. And from there the LORD dispersed them over the face of all the earth.
It is a surprise to most people to realise that the Bible does not present the narrative of the tower of Babel as an explanation of how all the languages of the world came about, though many people wrongly believe it says this.
From the previous chapter of Genesis, we find that many nations with their own languages already existed outside the Middle East at this time:
The sons of Javan: Elishah, Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim. {5} From these the coastland peoples spread in their lands, each with his own language, by their clans, in their nations. [Gen. 10:4-5]
From this record we can see that the descendants of Japheth already had their own languages at the time that the descendants of Ham had moved to Shinar. The Bible does not connect these two events, and although the history of Genesis 11 certainly steps back in time to the events of Genesis 10:9-10 (just after 2,900 BC), whereas the historical record of Genesis 10 contains events least as late as the building of Calah in verse 11 (about 1,200 BC), it does not make any reference to the descendants of Shem, Ham, or Japheth, or explain their diversity of language as a result of the events at Shinar (a diversity referred to in Genesis 11:5-6, 20, 31).
The most decisive proof that this incident is not related in order to explain the origin of the world’s languages, is that the record says no such thing, and actually uses this event to explain something else entirely:
So the LORD dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. {9} Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth. And from there the LORD dispersed them over the face of all the earth. [Gen. 11:8-9]
The record explicitly uses this event to explain why the Hebrew name ‘Babel’ was given to this city. The record tells us exactly what it intends to use this event to explain, and it is certainly not to explain the origin of the world’s languages.
It is also important to understand that the Babel narrative is confined to a local area within Mesopotamia, in the Middle East. The record is not speaking of the entire globe. The ‘earth’ in verse 1 is to be understood in its local sense. We saw that this is the same language as was used to describe the flood (see the answer to ‘Did the Flood cover the whole world?‘).
The proof of this is found in the first two verses of Genesis 11:
- Verse 1: the ‘whole earth’ shared a common language, but Genesis 10:5 tells that many nations with their own languages already existed outside the Middle East at ths time, so the word ‘earth’ in chapter 11 cannot be speaking globally
- Verse 2: ‘the people moved eastward’, a statement which cannot refer to all the people on the planet (did all the people on the planet really move eastward?), and must therefore refer to a group of people belonging to a local area
- Verse 2: the people moved from the west and arrived in a plain in the land of Shinar, a statement which only makes sense if referring to a group of people moving eastward from a local area west of Shinar, and makes no sense if applied globally (people in India or Russia could not be said to be travelling ‘eastward’ to Babylon)
- Verse 2: the group of people was small enough to consider a plain in nearby Shinar to be an area sufficient to accommodate their new urban development, indicating that this refers to a local group of people, and not the entire planet
Lessons from the account
What then is the record intending to teach us? What lessons are we to learn from this?
Some have seen the narrative as condemning urbanization, connecting the tower of Babel with God’s calling of Abraham out of Ur (an event which takes place in the very next chapter). It is suggested that the urban dwellers at Babel were deliberately scattered by God in order to teach them that the nomadic lifestyle was acceptable to God, whereas the urban lifestyle was not.
Since the city of Ur belonged to the same civilization to which the tower of Babel belonged, and since God called Abraham out of the urban lifestyle to a nomadic lifestyle, this seems at first to be a legitimate conclusion. However, whilst there are certainly important connections between the tower of Babel and the call of Abraham (and the two narratives do appear to have been placed next to each other in deliberate contrast), God’s punishment of the people at Babel is clearly declared to be the Divine judgment on a certain attitude, not simply a way of life.
The urbanization at Babel is a symptom of that attitude, but it is the attitude rather than the symptom which is punished:
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, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.”…And the LORD said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. [Gen. 11:4,6]
It is this attitude of challenging the Divine, the assumption that man can dominate not only the natural realm of his own environment, but also the Divine realm of heaven, which is the attitude God condemns. This challenge to Divine authority, and the remaking of God in the image of man, is the sin which the tower of Babel represents, an attitude which is displayed today whenever Babel is used as a sign of man’s achievements or aims.
In fact, the lessons of the tower of Babel are so well understood that for centuries the tower of Babel has been used as a symbol of the very attitudes God condemned there.