Genesis 6:9-11:32
The Bad Side of Tower-Building
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.” Some rabbinic interpreters explained that people sharing “the same words” were doing more than simply speaking the same language: words here might specifically mean that everyone was sharing the same thoughts or plans.
This would accord well with what happens next. 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.”
But 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 interpreters. One ancient source, the Book of Biblical Antiquities (probably written by a Jewish sage in the late first or early second century CE) suggested that—like some modern-day builders—those who constructed the tower sought to have their own names indelibly associated with it. Certainly such hubris was bad enough. But what’s more, 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! And so it was.
Interpreters were left with 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 probably not). 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, some verses are indeed written in Aramaic. Moreover, these words do not appear in Hebrew because God was addressing the Hebrew-speaking Israelites; He was talking 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).