NOTES for Gen 11:1-32

People very often feel sympathy for the figures in this passage. Look, people tried hard, worked, and an unkind God suddenly ruined everything. Was He really begrudging them something?... The real question, however, is for what purpose the tower is being built. The Tower of Babel symbolizes a civilization built as a challenge to God.

For some reason it seems that God's intervention here is quite conditional. The undertaking was apparently doomed to failure from the beginning because of mutual incomprehension among the builders. Even if at first they did speak one language, acting solely in order to prove what fine fellows they were, each of them was thinking about himself, not about the others. In that situation incomprehension was bound to arise, and it turned out that everyone was already speaking different languages.

This is what any activity apart from God is doomed to. Later, on the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit will heal this wound and make understanding possible even among people who speak different languages.