Genesis 6:9-11:32
The Holy Language
This week’s Torah reading ends with a somewhat mysterious incident, the building of the Tower of Babel. The Torah recounts that a ragtag band of people (apparently all of humanity at the time) traveled “from the east” and arrived at some point in the land of Shinar (Babylon). At this stage of things, according to Gen 11:1, “The whole earth was of one language and the same words.” Ancient interpreters of the Torah explained that people sharing “the same words” was different from simply speaking the same language: words here meant specifically that they all shared the same thoughts or plans.
The Torah goes on to report that the people resolved to create a city in Babel: “Come let us build a city for ourselves, and a tower with its top reaching 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 readers: 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 evil intent. Perhaps the builders wished to exercise control of the rain supply and thereby usurp one of God’s most important prerogatives. Indeed, perhaps they wanted to invade the divine realm and make war against God Himself. This understanding of the purpose behind the tower came to predominate among ancient 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 the people’s other stated aim, “let us make a name for ourselves,” had to do with their project, but this, too, aroused the suspicions of ancient interpreters. One source, the Book of Biblical Antiquities (probably written by a Jew in the late first or early second century CE) suggested that—like many modern-day architects—the builders intended to write their own names on the tower itself. Since many names in the ancient Near East included the name of a god or goddess, the tower would become a kind of public advertisement for the deities in question. This had to be stopped! Such an understanding might seem to be supported by God’s words that immediately follow: “If, as a single people with one language for all, this is what they have set out to do, then whatever they propose to do will not be closed off to them” (11:6).
I must confess, however, that all these arguments really don’t seem to add up to enough of a reason for God to have destroyed a whole city, with or without its offending tower. In an ideal world, people sharing the same language and plans and wanting to live in a single polity would seem to be quite laudable. As for building a tower and signing their names to it—this too seems altogether harmless. So what really was the matter? Perhaps we will never know. It’s just that every now and then, history unfolds in such a way as to make one glad that not everyone does speak the same language and shares the same plans, so that tower-builders, ancient or modern, don’t seem to have their way for long.
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 related. Since the words for “man” and “woman” were quite different from each other in Greek, Latin, Aramaic, Akkadian and other ancient 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).