43
Cloud obscures the soaring tip of
the Tower of Babel in a painting by an
unknown 16th-century Flemish artist,
who set the tower in a busy river port
with basilicas and mosques.He separates the people of Babel
by language so that they are unable
to complete the tower. God then
scatters them across the world,
in accordance with His previous
command in Genesis 1:22 to be
“fruitful and increase in number
and fill the earth.”Political purpose
The story also has a satirical
undercurrent. In the last verse,
for example—“That is why it was
called Babel—because there the
Lord confused the language of the
whole world” (11:9)—play is made of
a similarity between the nameBabel and the Hebrew balal,
meaning “confuse.” The intention
may be to poke fun at Babylon,
whose name meant “Gate of God.”
A more appropriate name, the
Genesis writers may be suggesting,
would be confusion.
Hostility toward Babylon is
not surprising given that the book
of Genesis probably took its final
form in the 5th century bce, not long
after the Judeans had returned to
Judah from their enforced exile in
Babylon following the Babylonian
capture of Judah. That experience,
along with the Israelites’ sufferings
at the hands of other regional
powers, may help explain the
author’s seeming preference for
smaller scattered nations, each
with its own language and
territory, over the consolidation
of power in a single imperial city. ■Gateways to heaven
Most Mesopotamian cities,
including Babylon, had
ziggurats, which rose from
the surrounding plain like
artificial mountains reaching
up to the heavens. These
temples were seen as
gateways between the world
of humans and the gods—an
act of pride disliked by the
God of the Israelites. They
were built with brick—there
was little or no stone in the
Mesopotamian floodplain—
with solid mud-brick cores
and exteriors of fired brick.
Sometimes their sides were
landscaped, as is commonly
depicted in images of the
Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
The inspiration for the
story of the Tower of Babel is
thought to be the Etemenanki
(“House of the Foundation of
Heaven and Earth”), a seven-
story ziggurat topped by a
sanctuary dedicated to the
god Marduk. The chief temple
of Babylon, the Etemenanki
was destroyed by the Assyrian
King Sennacherib in 689 bce.
Ziggurats have not
survived as well as the
stone-built pyramids of Egypt
but their remains still exist,
including those of the Great
Ziggurat of Ur in southern Iraq.GENESIS
See also: The Fall 30–35 ■ The Flood 40–41 ■ Sodom and Gomorrah 48–49 ■^
The Fall of Jerusalem 128–31 ■ The Day of Pentecost 282–83Partially restored, the Great
Ziggurat of Ur, in modern-day
Iraq, was built during the Third
Sumerian Dynasty, c.2100 bce.
Like other ziggurats, it was
climbed by sloping ramps.US_042-043_Tower_of_Babel.indd 43 21/09/17 11:26 am