The tower of Babel
The whole earth, of one language, built a city and a tower in the plain of Shinar; God confounded their language and scattered them. The lines run to the nations Genesis 10 names, as they are usually matched: Javan (the Greeks), Tarshish, Kittim (Cyprus), Madai (the Medes), Mizraim (Egypt), Cush, Phut (Libya), Canaan, Asshur (Assyria), Elam, Aram (Syria) and Sheba.
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The whole story
They said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower whose top may reach unto heaven, and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad. They made brick and burned it thoroughly, and had slime for mortar. The LORD came down to see the city and the tower, and confounded their language, that they might not understand one another’s speech.
The name Babel, Genesis says, came from that confusion; in Hebrew it sounds like the word for confused, while the Babylonians took it to mean the gate of the gods. Babylon had a real temple tower, Etemenanki, the house of the foundation of heaven and earth, rising in stages beside the temple of Marduk, and the Greek historian Herodotus described its towers one upon another.
Only its base survives, a square outline near the ruins of Babylon, for Alexander the Great had it cleared to rebuild it and died before the work began. The table of nations in Genesis 10, which the lines on the map follow, sets out the scattered families by their tongues, their lands and their nations.
Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.
Genesis 11:9, KJV
Where it happened
Babylon, Near Hillah, Iraq.
Babel is the Hebrew name of Babylon, by the Euphrates south of Baghdad. Which tower Genesis means is not known; many think of Babylon’s great temple tower.
Every story stands at its place on the Worldwide Watch map: the Bible’s world, on the map.
More from Beginnings
Genesis 1 to 11
Sources and editorial method
Research and editorial references used for this page include:
- The King James Bible, as published by bible-api.com
- The Book of Enoch, translated by R. H. Charles (1917), Project Gutenberg
Every story is told from the King James Bible, and from the Book of Enoch in R. H. Charles’s translation (1917) where a story names it. Every quotation was checked word for word against those texts. Where a place is not known, the page says so. The paintings and the narration were made for the house.
