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.

Review of the previous post

The previous post, Number 7 of 14, was the fourth of seven posts presenting some possible explanations for the God’s destruction of the Tower of Babel.

Preview of this post

This post, Number 8 of 14, is the fifth of seven posts presenting some possible explanations for the God’s destruction of the Tower of Babel.

III. Explanations for the story

1. The Tower was destroyed to prevent one people from dominating others.

Perhaps, the people who built the Tower had begun to establish their dominance over all others, and hence everyone spoke the same language^[1] and “language” is a metaphor for “common objectives, common beliefs, etc. hence a single nation. This seems to be emphasized by repetition in the next phrase, “and one speech” which appears to imply that all not only believed the same way, but all spoke out in the same manner as well so that there is no dissent. At the beginning of the story of the Tower, certain people had established power and authority over all others and was seeking to extend this power and authority and thus was beginning to move back to the “might makes right” attitude that God destroyed in the flood that immediately preceded this episode. This would appear to be especially so since the story of the Tower occurs when humanity and the world were just being reconstructed and reconstituted from the flood which had just occurred in the previous chapter of Genesis. Mankind and the world were still new and as such were extremely vulnerable to the rise of a powerful nation so early. God could not destroy the earth again because He had promised not to and had memorialized this promise with a rainbow. Hence God had to nip this plan in the bud. He did so by destroying the symbol of the power, the Tower, and disrupting the communications system by forcing different languages (back) on to the people. The set back to unity indicated by forcing people to speak different languages was more than balanced by the fact that a repeat of the Nephilim was avoided and diversity was encouraged.

The Babylonians were to conquer Israel in later times, but at this time Israel had not yet been founded. If the Babylonians had been permitted to erect such a strong city, they may have been so strong that the country of Israel could not even have been founded. In that case, God could not have used the Babylonians to teach Israel a lesson as suggested by the prophets^[2]. God may simply have not been ready for the Babylonians to become a strong, central and dominant nation. Scattering them and causing them to speak different languages is a good way to weaken them.

This explanation seems reasonable. However, again, it does not seem to provide sufficient theocentered basis for including this story in the story of Genesis.

Preview of the next post

The next post, Number 9 of 14, is the sixth of seven posts presenting some possible explanations for the God’s destruction of the Tower of Babel.

^[1] As stated by Leon R. Kass in The Beginning of Wisdom (Chicago, University of Chicago Press of Chicago and London, 2003, paperback), “To be ‘of one language’ is to be of one mind and heart about the most fundamental things.” Further, Kass states, “speech is colored always by human perceptions, passions, interests and desires…Language therefore conveys less the world as it is than it does the self-interested and humanly constructed vision of that world.”

^[2] However, this explanation presupposes that God can predict the future which violates a basic ground rule as set forth in the essay titled “God’s Ground Rules”.