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. It is suggested that the Discussion Questions associated with The Tower of Babel Series be reviewed.

Review of the previous post

The previous post, Number 13 of 14, was the first of two posts discussing the destruction of the Tower of Babel in relation to God interfering with man’s free will.

Preview of this post

This post, Number 14 of 14, is the second of two posts discussing the destruction of the Tower of Babel in relation to God interfering with man’s free will. This post is the last post in the “Tower of Babel” series of the Section titled “God and Man Learning to Work Together – The Journey Begins.”

1. Destroying the Tower of Babel interfered with the free will of the builders

1. B. Scattering the people will protect the covenant

As discussed in other series (see, e.g., “God’s Ground Rules”), God will interfere with man’s free will in order to protect the overall experiment^[1] begun in Genesis and to protect the covenant between God and man. In fact, that might be viewed as one of God’s responsibilities under the partnership: protecting the overall experiment in general and protecting the covenant in particular. If the Jews are all concentrated in one place (such as the case with the clans of the Patriarchs), total destruction of the human partner in charge of the covenant is highly likely (see, for example, the potential total destruction of the human partner through assimilation at Shechem, or the total destruction of the human partner in Egypt, or the total destruction of the human partner by destruction of the initial members when Sarai is captured in Egypt, etc) and God will intervene to protect this human partner and prevent his destruction.

The best way to protect the human partner from such total destruction without requiring God’s continual intervention is to disperse the human partners as widely as possible. In this manner, destruction of one portion of the human partner will not doom the entire partner. Thus, scattering the nations in the story of Babel is God’s way of protecting them. As discussed in the essay “”Exodus and Holocaust,” this scattering protected the Jewish Nation from being totally destroyed by the Nazis in the Holocaust. Many of the members of the human covenant partnership were in the United States where Hitler could not reach them and thus these members were protected from destruction. This dispersing was continued after destruction of the Temples and allowed some Jews to live outside of Israel and thus be protected against destruction in the event of Israel’s destruction (as occurred in 70 C.E.). Thus, the protection offered by Diaspora was begun in the story of the Tower of Babel. While Diaspora seems to be a curse, it can be viewed as a blessing, especially since the Jews adapted to it and actually used it to invent Nationalism for a scattered people^[2] which allowed the Jewish religion to survive the negative aspects of Diaspora while benefitting from the positive aspects of Diaspora (to wit: protection from total destruction).

This is the last post in the Tower of Babel series.

^[1] As discussed elsewhere, the term “experiment” will be applied to our universe in general and as a whole and our earth specifically with the covenant between God and the Jews charging the Jews with the responsibility of translating what God wants for the earth for the other inhabitants of the earth.

^[2] See the series “Judaism and Nationalism”.