The Tower of Babel

The sons of Noah were three — Shem, Japheth and Ham — born a hundred years before the flood. They were the first to come down from the mountains into the plains and make their home there, and they persuaded others, who were badly afraid of the lowlands because of the flood and very reluctant to come down from the high places, to venture to follow their example. The plain where they first lived was called Shinar. Because they had grown so many, God also commanded them to send out colonies, so that they would not fall into strife among themselves, but would farm a great part of the earth and enjoy its fruits in plenty. But they were so poorly taught that they did not obey God, and for this they fell into misfortunes and learned by experience what sin they had committed. For when they flourished with a great number of young people, God again warned them to send out colonies. But they imagined that their prosperity did not come from God’s favor; supposing that their own strength was the real cause of their plentiful condition, they did not obey him. To this disobedience to God’s will they even added the suspicion that he was ordering them to send out separate colonies so that, once divided, they could be more easily overpowered. [a]

It was Nimrod who stirred them up to such insolence and contempt toward God. He was the grandson of Ham, the son of Noah — a bold man, and very strong. He persuaded them not to give the credit to God, as though it were through him that they were happy, but to believe that it was their own courage that had won them that happiness. He also gradually turned the government into a tyranny, seeing no other way to turn people from the fear of God than to make them constantly dependent on his own power. He said, too, that he would take revenge on God if he meant to flood the world again: he would build a tower too high for the waters to reach, and he would avenge himself on God for destroying their forefathers!

The crowd was very ready to follow Nimrod’s lead and to regard submitting to God as slavery. They built a tower, sparing no effort and in no way careless about the work, and because of the great number of hands employed on it, it grew very high sooner than anyone could have expected. But it was so thick and so strongly built that its great height looked less than it really was. It was built of baked brick, cemented together with mortar made of bitumen, so that water could not get in. [c]

When God saw them acting so madly, he did not decide to destroy them completely, since they had not grown any wiser from the destruction of the earlier sinners. Instead he threw them into faction by making them speak different languages, so that through the number of those languages they could not understand one another. The place where they built the tower is now called Babylon, because of the confusion of the language they had once easily understood; for by the word Babel the Hebrews mean confusion.

The Sibyl also mentions this tower and the confusion of language, when she says this: “When all people had one language, some of them built a high tower, as if they meant to climb up to heaven by it. But the gods sent winds and overthrew the tower, and gave each one his own language; and that is why the city was called Babylon.” And as for the plain of Shinar, in the country of Babylonia, Hestiaeus mentions it when he says this: “Those of the priests who were saved took the sacred vessels of Zeus Enyalius and came to Shinar in Babylonia.”