The Tower of Babel

1 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2 As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.

3 They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”

5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. 6 The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”

8 So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel —because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

From Shem to Abram

10 This is the account of Shem’s family line.

Two years after the flood, when Shem was 100 years old, he became the father of Arphaxad. 11 And after he became the father of Arphaxad, Shem lived 500 years and had other sons and daughters.

12 When Arphaxad had lived 35 years, he became the father of Shelah. 13 And after he became the father of Shelah, Arphaxad lived 403 years and had other sons and daughters.

14 When Shelah had lived 30 years, he became the father of Eber. 15 And after he became the father of Eber, Shelah lived 403 years and had other sons and daughters.

16 When Eber had lived 34 years, he became the father of Peleg. 17 And after he became the father of Peleg, Eber lived 430 years and had other sons and daughters.

18 When Peleg had lived 30 years, he became the father of Reu. 19 And after he became the father of Reu, Peleg lived 209 years and had other sons and daughters.

20 When Reu had lived 32 years, he became the father of Serug. 21 And after he became the father of Serug, Reu lived 207 years and had other sons and daughters.

22 When Serug had lived 30 years, he became the father of Nahor. 23 And after he became the father of Nahor, Serug lived 200 years and had other sons and daughters.

24 When Nahor had lived 29 years, he became the father of Terah. 25 And after he became the father of Terah, Nahor lived 119 years and had other sons and daughters.

26 After Terah had lived 70 years, he became the father of Abram, Nahor and Haran.

Abram’s Family

27 This is the account of Terah’s family line.

Terah became the father of Abram, Nahor and Haran. And Haran became the father of Lot. 28 While his father Terah was still alive, Haran died in Ur of the Chaldeans, in the land of his birth. 29 Abram and Nahor both married. The name of Abram’s wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor’s wife was Milkah; she was the daughter of Haran, the father of both Milkah and Iskah. 30 Now Sarai was childless because she was not able to conceive.

31 Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, the wife of his son Abram, and together they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan. But when they came to Harran, they settled there.

32 Terah lived 205 years, and he died in Harran.

Summary: All of the peoples of the earth lived in the same place and spoke the same language. The decided, using the technology of brick, to build a city, and a tall tower, “otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.” God came down from heaven to see what was going on with the city. When he saw their efforts to build a tower, he decides to confuse their language and scatter them over the face of the earth, because “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.” This chapter then lists the genealogy from Shem to Abram, as well as some of the specifics of Abram’s immediate family.

Used with permission from visualunit.me.

The Tower of Babel:

So, this must not be chronologically following the last chapter, as everyone already was spread throughout the world with their own languages by the end of Chapter 10. In this chapter, humans have advanced in technology from stone and wood to bricks, and they decide that they want to leave a legacy on this earth by building a city with a large tower.

God’s answer to this people’s determination and work ethic is revealing: He says that, when they all work together they could accomplish anything, so he has to stop them by making it impossible to communicate. Then He scatters them around the world.

But God, after destroying humanity just a couple of generations ago, had said:

“Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth. The fear and dread of you will fall on all the beasts of the earth, and on all the birds in the sky, on every creature that moves along the ground, and on all the fish in the sea; they are given into your hands. Everything that lives and moves about will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.” (Genesis : 1-3)

Why would this God urge them to prosper and then become threatened when they do? Would a creator of the universe really have such a problem with a group of people who could build a tower?

Shem to Abram: 

Here we get another family tree, this as dry and female-less as the last one. Here we see the lifespan of man (or at least these named men), dramatically decreasing when compared to their ancestors. It may be that after the flood life and the local environment wasn’t as friendly for humanity, or that God, following up on his proclamation in Genesis 6:3:

Then the Lord said, “My Spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.”

However, the lifespan expectancy is still above this mark, as the last person listed in this chapter, Terah, lived 205 years.

Incest and Women:

In the last verses of this chapter we see the Bible’s first official case of incest, with Nahor marrying his dead brother’s daughter, Milkah. Abram’s wife, Sarai, is only mentioned in the context of being unable to have children, cementing the Bible’s pattern of assigning value to women as mothers only, written about only as nameless daughters. These are the only women we’ve seen mentioned since Naamah, in Genesis 4.