The Tower of Babylon
1 The whole earth had the same language and vocabulary. 2 As people migrated from the east, they found a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there. p 3 They said to each other, “Come, let us make oven-fired bricks.” (They used brick for stone and asphalt q for mortar.) 4 And they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the sky. r Let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise, we will be scattered throughout the earth.”
5 Then the LORD came down s to look over the city and the tower that the humans were building. 6 The LORD said, “If they have begun to do this as one people all having the same language, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let’s go down there and confuse their language so that they will not understand one another’s speech.” 8 So from there the LORD scattered them throughout the earth, t and they stopped building the city. 9 Therefore it is called Babylon, ,,u for there the LORD confused the language of the whole earth, and from there the LORD scattered them throughout the earth.
From Shem to Abram
10 These are the family records v of Shem. Shem lived 100 years and fathered Arpachshad two years after the flood. 11 After he fathered Arpachshad, Shem lived 500 years and fathered other sons and daughters. 12 Arpachshad lived 35 years and fathered Shelah. 13 After he fathered Shelah, Arpachshad lived 403 years and fathered other sons and daughters. 14 Shelah lived 30 years and fathered Eber. 15 After he fathered Eber, Shelah lived 403 years and fathered other sons and daughters. 16 Eber lived 34 years and fathered Peleg. 17 After he fathered Peleg, Eber lived 430 years and fathered other sons and daughters. 18 Peleg lived 30 years and fathered Reu. 19 After he fathered Reu, Peleg lived 209 years and fathered other sons and daughters. 20 Reu lived 32 years and fathered Serug. 21 After he fathered Serug, Reu lived 207 years and fathered other sons and daughters. 22 Serug lived 30 years and fathered Nahor. 23 After he fathered Nahor, Serug lived 200 years and fathered other sons and daughters. 24 Nahor lived 29 years and fathered Terah. w 25 After he fathered Terah, Nahor lived 119 years and fathered other sons and daughters. 26 Terah lived 70 years and fathered Abram, Nahor, and Haran.
27 These are the family records of Terah. Terah fathered Abram, Nahor, and Haran, and Haran fathered Lot. 28 Haran died in his native land, in Ur of the Chaldeans, during his father Terah’s lifetime. 29 Abram and Nahor took wives: Abram’s wife was named Sarai, x and Nahor’s wife was named Milcah. y She was the daughter of Haran, the father of both Milcah and Iscah. 30 Sarai was unable to conceive; z she did not have a child.
31 Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot (Haran’s son), and his daughter-in-law Sarai, his son Abram’s wife, and they set out together from Ur of the Chaldeans a to go to the land of Canaan. But when they came to Haran, they settled there. 32 Terah lived 205 years and died in Haran.
I. The tower of Babylon (11:1–9). 11:1. The whole world with which 11:1 begins has just been described at length in chapter 10. Further, we read, this world has one language and a common speech. This is puzzling, for already in Gn 10 we have read, three times, about the descendants of Noah, who were divided on the basis of their respective languages (10:5, 20, 31). There are four possible ways of handling this. One is to maintain that the two chapters contradict each other. A second way is to suggest that chapter 10 refers to local languages and dialects, while chapter 11 refers to an international language, a lingua franca. A third approach is to suggest that chapter 10, although actually falling after 11:1–9, is placed ahead of chapter 11, lest chapter 10 be read as a manifestation of God’s judgment on the Noahites. Finally, this could be an instance of a general description of an event (chap. 10) followed by one that provides more details about the event (11:1–9). We have already seen this pattern with Gn 1 as a general overview and Gn 2 as a sequel that adds greater detail.
11:2–4. Shinar is the land of Babylonia (11:2). The tower the people want to build is probably a ziggurat, a seven-staged tower. In addition they want to build a city, and thus join Cain (4:17) in such an enterprise. In itself this is not sinful. Nor is it sinful to wish to build a tower that reaches to the heavens. The sin comes in the purpose: “Let us make a name for ourselves” (11:4). “Name” means reputation. They want to erect an edifice that will memorialize them.
11:5. It is difficult to miss the irony or humor in 11:5. The people want to build a skyscraper, but the Lord still comes down to see the city and the tower. Once again there is an emphasis on somebody seeing something. This is the first of several times in the Bible that God “comes down” (e.g., Gn 18:21; Ex 3:8). He did not need, by contrast, to come down to speak with Adam or with Noah.
11:6–9. Note that God does not halt the project while it is under construction. Nor does he destroy it once it is completed. What God does is judge the language, not the tower or the city (11:6). The people’s tongues, and not their hands, feel the wrath of God. This gives rise to the name Babylon (Hb “Babel,” which means “to confound, confuse”; see the CSB footnote; 11:9). The Babylonians themselves call their city bab-ili or bab-ilani, “gate of the god(s),” which is reflected in the Greek Babylōn.
J. The Shemites (11:10–32). Here is another ten-generation genealogy, stretching from Shem to Terah/Abraham. A possible connection between 11:1–9 and 11:10–32 is that in the former section some people wanted to make a name (Hb shem) for themselves, and 11:10–32 is the family tree of Shem. The list is much like that in 10:21, 24–25. Four of the names are repeated—Arphachshad (11:11), Shelah (11:12), Eber (11:14), and Peleg (11:16). Additionally some of the names are to be identified with place names in northwest Mesopotamia (e.g., Serug/Sarugi [11:20]; Nahor/Nakhur [11:22]). This lends historical credibility to the genealogy.