Mysteries of Babel
This week’s Torah reading ends with the brief story of the Tower of Babel, one of the most puzzling stories in the book of Genesis. According to the 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 Gen 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 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 so allow themselves to dwell in harmony behind its walls?
Considering the matter, ancient scholars saw the tower as the most likely problem. After all, specifying that its top was to reach up to heaven suggested some hubristic intent—perhaps to exercise control of the rain supply and thereby usurp one of God’s most important prerogatives—indeed, perhaps to make war against God Himself. This understanding of the intent behind the tower came to predominate among interpreters, which is why this story is known to this day as the Tower of Babel and not, for example, the City of Babel (Note, however, that the tower is not mentioned at the conclusion of the story, but the building of the city is—as if stopping the building, and not the tower, were the true purpose of God’s intervention; see Gen 11:8).
It’s not clear what “let us make a name for ourselves” had to do with this project, but it, too, aroused the suspicions of ancient interpreters. The word for name, shem, could also be pronounced sham (“there”)—written Hebrew at this stage lacked the dots and dashes that in later times were used to specify the precise vowels to be inserted in the consonantal text. If indeed the text were read as “Let us make there for ourselves”—well, obviously, a word would be missing, some direct object of the verb “make.” But this was easily explained: the text was hinting that the builders’ intention was to make an idol at the top of the tower—what they really had said was “Let us make an idol there for ourselves.” If so, the Torah must have intentionally omitted this blasphemy.
Such an understanding might well fit with God’s decree: “If, as a single people with one language for all, this is what they have set out to do, then whatever they may set out to do will be closed off to them” (11:6). In other words, once they start building these towers with their idols on top of them, there will be nothing to stop them. Taken together, these were, according to ancient sages, the real reasons for God’s putting a stop to the building project.
Interpreters had one last question: What was the “one language” that all humans shared at first? Most 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 (although now we know they’re actually not). 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 written in any language—and indeed, elsewhere in the Bible, many verses are written in Aramaic. Moreover, these words do not appear in Hebrew because God was addressing the Israelites; He was speaking to (or in the presence of) His own angels. The conclusion was inescapable: Hebrew was the language of heaven, “the holy tongue” (leshon ha-kodesh) as it is sometimes called. 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!