Then the Lord came down to look over the city and the tower that the humans were building. 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. Come, let’s go down there and confuse their language so that they will not understand one another’s speech.” So from there the Lord scattered them throughout the earth, and they stopped building the city. Therefore it is called Babylon, for there the Lord confused the language of the whole earth, and from there the Lord scattered them throughout the earth (Genesis 11:5-9, CSB).

The tower of Babel was probably a ziggurat, which was a common archaeological structure in ancient Mesopotamian cities. Archaelogists have unearthed dozens of ziggurats in the region, the most famous being the Great Ziggurat of Ur in Iraq. It is a huge, 4,100 year old structure made up of more than 700,000 baked bricks.

Ziggurats, unlike the pyramids in Egypt that were tombs for pharaohs, were stairways for the gods. The defining structure of a ziggurat was a long stairway leading to the top where a room with a bed and table was prepared for the deity. The stairway was not for people to climb up, but for the god to come down.

In these verses God “came down” to look over the city and the tower the people were building up to heaven. But, God didn’t need to be invited or enticed to come down from heaven to the earth nor did He need to descend a stairway to facilitate His descent.

So, there may be some irony in these verses in describing God’s descent to the earth to look over the the city and tower of Babel. The people flagrantly resisted God’s plan by coming together in one place, building a city and tower, and not settling throughout the earth as directed in the Noahic covenant (see Genesis 9:1,7, 11:4).

God did not come down to evaluate the peoples’ work on the city and the tower but to scatter them throughout the earth!

God’s response to the rebellion, interestingly enough, was not to destroy the city and the tower but to confuse the peoples’ language. As a result, people congregated with other people who spoke the same language, and then went together and settled in other parts of the world (Genesis 10:5, 20, 31-32; 11:8-9).

There is a wordplay between the Hebrew word “Babel” and the Hebrew word for confusion. God confused the languages at Babel to enforce His command for humanity to spread throughout the entire world.

And, without a common language the people who had been adamant about staying together and building a city to make a name for themselves were now unable to understand each other. Consequently, they were scattered throughout the earth quite possibly according to linguistic understanding.

But, this post-Babel confusion of the peoples’ language after God’s intervention is certainly emblematic of their pre-Babel confusion about communicating with God. Before God confused their speech they were already confused about how to reach God!

This same confusion about how to reach God exists in the world today. God calls on His people to speak with boldness and clarity the truth of the Gospel of Christ throughout the world.

Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you.(Matthew 28:19-20, CSB)