- Tower of Babel – Man’s Free Will
- Tower of Babel – Man’s Free Will
- Tower of Babel – Further Thoughts
- Tower of Babel – A Theocentric Explanation
- Tower of Babel – Further Explanation
- Tower of Babel – Possible Explanation
- Tower of Babel – Further Explanations
- Tower of Babel – Possible Explanation
- Tower of Babel – Further Explanations
- Tower of Babel – Explanations
- Tower of Babel – Legend
- Summary of Tower of Babel Story
- The Tower of Babel – Introduction
This series “The Tower of Babel” is part of the Section “God and Man Learning to Work Together – The Journey Begins” and consists of fourteen posts. The series proposes new explanations for why God destroyed the Tower of Babel.
Preview of this post
This post, Number 2 of 14, presents a summary of the story so the reader and the blogger will be focusing on the same version of the story. This will prevent any misunderstanding caused by different versions of the story.
- Summary of the story
- Genesis 10 through Genesis 11
The story is preceded by a listing of the lines of Shem, Ham and Japheth, the sons of Noah. These men began their journeys Eastward from the mountains of Ararat westward toward the Mediterranean Sea. As stated in the Bible, “These are the descendants of Japheth by their lands – each with its language…”(Gen 10:5); “These are the descendants of Ham, according to their clans and languages, by their lands and nations” (Gen 10:20); and “These are the descendants of Shem, according to their clans and languages, by their lands and nations” (Gen 10:31). At the end of Chapter 10, the people had different languages.
However, in Chapter 11, the story of the Tower of Babel opens with “Everyone on earth had the same language and the same words” (Gen 11:1).
- Genesis 11
They said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and burn them hard.” – Brick served them as stone, and bitumen served them as mortar. – And they said, “Come, let us build us a city, and a tower with its top in the sky, to make a name for ourselves; else we shall be scattered all over the world. The Lord came down to look at the city and tower that man had built, and the Lord said, “If as one people with one language for all, this is how they have begun to act, then nothing that they may propose to do will be out of their reach. Thus the Lord scattered them from there over the face of the whole earth; and they stopped building the city. That is why it is called Babel, because there the Lord confounded the speech of the whole earth, and from there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.
Preview of the next post
The next post, Number 3 of 14, presents some questions raised by the story.