While many people assume that the story of the Tower of Babel is about God punishing man for trying to be God, it is actually a story of God implementing a measure of control over the affairs of man in order to prevent a revival of the pre-flood wickedness, fulfill Noah’s curse on his sons, and form a covenant with Abraham and begin Abrahamic religion.
The story of the Tower of Babel tells of a time when the world was unified under a common language. They also settled in a common area, and decided to make a large, burnt brick structure so that they would be protected from harm. In the ancient world, burnt brick structures lasted several generations, and the structure of that time could withstand almost any natural disaster, giving credence to the Lord’s claim that if they began to do this, nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.
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Thus God confuses their languages, and scatters them into tribes so that He may prevent the evils of the pre-flood society from being repeated, as well as fulfill Noah’s curse and begin the formation of the Tribe of Israel.
As the Bible says in Genesis 6:5, “God floods the earth, not merely because the deeds of man were wicked but more importantly the imagination of man was constantly on evil.” Because man is shown to have a capacity to invent evil, (hence the stress on “Imagination and Thought”) it would stand to reason that God distrusts what the combination of man’s evil imagination and the unlimited power and resources of a united people will do.
Therefore, it could be argued that God scattered the people of Babel to prevent a revival of the pre-flood wickedness. Another reason God might have had to scatter the people of Babel is to fulfill Noah’s curse on his sons. As it says in Genesis 6:9, “Noah was a righteous man... [He] walked with God” as well as the man God chose to save from the complete destruction of the world. Therefore, it would be likely that God would listen to Noah’s wishes.
After the flood, Noah gets drunk and lies in his tent naked. His son, Ham, sees him naked while his other brothers, Shem and Japheth, cover their father’s nakedness. As punishment for this humiliation, Noah curses Ham’s son, Canaan, to be “a slave of slaves...to his brothers”. In order to fulfill Noah’s curse, God had to disrupt the equality of the united people of Babel by spreading the people into tribes. By dividing the people into tribes, He was able to enact Noah’s curse, and the descendants of Ham would be conquered and enslaved by the descendants of his brothers.
Another reason God might have disrupted the united people of Babel is to endorse the tribe of Abraham as His chosen people. Following a similar reasoning as to why God divided Babel to enact the curse of Noah, God could also have instigated the mass migration of Babel to single out Abraham and his descendants as His chosen people. Genesis 11:31 describes how the migration instigated in Babel eventually led to Abraham migrating to Ur. During this migration, God commands Abraham to go to a land that God would “show him” so that God can “make of you a great nation, separate from the rest”.
Through this calling, God makes Abraham’s tribe His chosen people. Throughout Genesis, God or those faithful to him, such as Isaac or Jacob, instruct their families not to marry from the surrounding tribes of Canaan but to only marry those of the tribe of Israel. This is the first of many instances in the Bible that God commands His chosen people not to intermingle with the surrounding tribes. Therefore, it can be argued that God’s scattering of the town of Babel was the first example of Him enforcing segregation of His chosen people away from the rest of the world.
Despite the differences in God’s possible motivations--destroying Babel in order to prevent a return to a pre-flood wickedness, destroying Babel to engender the inequality necessary to bring Noah’s curse to fruition, or destroying Babel in order to distinguish His chosen people among other tribes--the common theme that binds them is God’s wish to implement greater control over the lives of His people that such unity and common purpose might have prevented Him from doing.
