Genesis 6:9 – 11:32

The Broken Tower

This week’s Torah reading ends with a brief incident, the building of the Tower of Babel. According to the biblical text, the ragtag band of humanity (apparently all of it) arrived at some point in the land of Shinar (Babel). At this stage of things, according to Genesis 11:1, “The whole earth was of one language and the same words.” Under these circumstances, the people resolved to create a city in Babel: “Come let us build a city for ourselves, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves so that we will not be scattered all across the land.”

 

All this raised an obvious question for ancient interpreters: What was so bad about this building project? What did God find so objectionable in the people’s wanting to build a city and thereby allow themselves to dwell in harmony behind its walls?
Considering the matter, ancient scholars concluded that the tower was the source of the problem. After all, specifying that its top was intended to “reach up to heaven” suggested some evil intent. Perhaps the builders had sought to gain control over heaven’s rain supply and thereby usurp one of God’s most important prerogatives. Indeed, perhaps they sought to make war against God Himself.

 

This understanding of the intent behind the tower came to predominate among ancient interpreters, which is why this story is still known today as the Tower of Babel and not, for example, the Destruction of the City of Babel. (Indeed, the broken tower is not mentioned at the conclusion of the biblical narrative—as if frustrating the building were the true purpose of God’s intervention. Some interpreters went further to suggest that the tower’s real purpose was to write the names of their idols on the tower’s very top—surely enough arrogance to merit divine intervention.

 

Interpreters had one final question: What was the “one language” that all humans shared at first (Gen 11:1)? Some answered: Hebrew. There were some strong arguments in favor of this conclusion. After the creation of Eve, Adam declares: “This one will be called woman (’ishah), since from man (’ish) she was taken (Gen 2:23). Certainly these two words seemed to be etymologically related. Since the words for “man” and “woman” were quite different from each other in Greek, Latin, Aramaic, Akkadian and other languages, this certainly strengthened the notion that the original language was indeed Hebrew.

 

What is more, when God was creating the world, He said, “Let there be light,” and “Let us make man.” In the Torah, these words could have been spoken in any language—and indeed, elsewhere in the Bible, certain verses are written not in Hebrew, but Aramaic. So the choice of Hebrew was hardly a foregone conclusion. Moreover, these words do not appear in Hebrew because God was addressing the Israelites; the Israelites did not yet exist.
Rather, ancient sages concluded that God was speaking to (or in the presence of) His own angels. The conclusion was almost inescapable: Hebrew was the language of heaven, “the holy tongue” (leshon ha-kodesh) as it was sometimes called. Modern scholars used to think that this honorific name was a creation of rabbinic times, until the phrase “holy tongue” turned up recently in one of the Dead Sea Scrolls (4Q464, frag 3, col 1:8).

 

Shabbat shalom!