Bible Study: Genesis

Lesson 8: Genesis 10 And 11: Tower Of Babel

Tower of Babel

A. Literary Features

1. The structure of the tower of Babel account can be outlined as follows:

A "whole earth had one language" B "come let us make bricks" C "the Lord came down" B'"come let us mix up" A'"language of the whole earth"

2. literary parallels

"Unlike the case with the flood story, no good Near Eastern parallel to the tower of Babel story is known. But as with Genesis 2-3, certain oriental motifs seem to have been drawn on to create our present narrative. The great ziggurats ... were a well known feature ... Enuma Elish celebrates the building of Babylon and its temple tower, and Sumerian tradition tells of a time when all men spoke or will speak the same language ..." (Wenham, 236-37).

B. Explanation

1. verses 1-5

a. "moved eastward": Echoes the frequent notices about man's movement east (Adam and Eve, Cain). "Eastward marks events of separation in Genesis" (Matthews, 478).

b. The plane of Mesopotamia lies between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

c. The comment about building materials accurately reflects the differences between Israelite and Mesopotamian materials. But it is also a disparagement of the Babylonian building methods, i.e., "they use crude bricks, we have stone!"

d. The intent to build a tower reaching into the sky is the most obvious allusion to Babylonian theology. "It was a commonplace of Babylonian thought that temples had their roots in the netherworld and their tops reached up to heaven" (Wenham, 237).

e. The rationale for building the tower seems to include the search for fame ("name") and security ("lest we be scattered"). The latter also represents a refusal to carry out the divine command to fill the earth.

f. Verse five humorously represents God's reaction to the Babylonian efforts. They intended to build a tower to reach into heaven, but God has to descend simply to be able to see it. "A brilliant and dramatic way of expressing the puniness of man's greatest achievements, when set along side the creator's omnipotence" (Wenham, 240).

2. verses 6-9

a. The confusion of the languages leads to the cessation of the building activity and to the scattering of the people. This reveals "the profound grasp of culture that this story exhibits. Without the mutual communication through a common language, it is impossible for men to cooperate either commercially or socially" (Wenham, 241).

b. The whole story largely through phonetic allusions (in the original Hebrew) has been leading up to the formula "that is why it was called Babel." The Babylonians proposed the popular etymology "the gate of god." The writer, however, offered the less complementary "confused, mixed up" to further deflate the pretensions of the tower builders.

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