Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Genesis · About this commentary
A tower, and a name for ourselves
Genesis 11:1-9
1 The whole earth was of one language and of one speech. · WEB
Humanity's first united project is an attempt to avoid being scattered, and God scatters them — which is the mercy the chapter conceals.
The whole earth was of one language and of one speech. The account rewinds behind the table of nations to explain how the languages of that chapter came about, and it begins with the opposite condition.
The setting is precise and the detail is right for the place. They settle in a plain in Shinar , southern Mesopotamia, where there is no building stone — and the narrator explains, for readers who build in stone, that they had brick for stone, and they used tar for mortar. Fired brick and bitumen are exactly what the great structures of that region were made of.
Their stated purpose has two halves and the second is the confession. Let's build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top reaches to the sky, and let's make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad on the surface of the whole earth.
They want a name, and they want not to be scattered. Both run directly against what God had said. The command after the flood was to be fruitful, multiply, and replenish the earth Genesis 9:1 — filling the earth was the assignment, and refusing to be dispersed is a refusal of it. And a name is precisely what God gives; two chapters later he tells one man I will bless you and make your name great Genesis 12:2. The thing they try to seize is the thing he was ready to give.
The tower reaching to the sky is the ambition the chapter is named for, and the narrative punctures it in a single line: Yahweh came down to see the city and the tower. The structure meant to reach heaven is so far beneath it that God has to descend to look. There is no lightning and no denunciation — the humor is doing the theological work.
God's assessment is not that the project is impious but that it will succeed: this is what they begin to do. Now nothing will be withheld from them, which they intend to do. A united human race with unlimited capacity and this particular motive is a prospect God treats as dangerous. Given what the generation before the flood had done with far less, the judgment is not hard to follow.
And the response deliberately echoes their own words. They said Come, let's make bricks; God says Come, let's go down. The same plural of deliberation appears here as at the making of man.
So the languages are confused and the people are scattered — which is what they had built the city to prevent, and which is what they had been told to do in the first place. The judgment enforces the original command. Every nation of the previous chapter exists because of this paragraph, and the diversity of peoples that Scripture later treats as something to be gathered and healed Revelation 7:9 begins as a restraint on a united ambition.
The name they wanted is the one thing they got, and not as they intended: the city is called Babel , confusion.
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