The Tower of Babel

Estimated Date: c. 2240 B.C. (106 years after the flood. Information on date calculation can be found here.)
Place: Shinar, which is suggested to be in modern-day Syria.
Major Characters: God
Biblical Text: Genesis 11:1-9

"Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there." (Genesis 11:1-2)


Several generations later, many people come together in the land of Shinar to build a city with a tower which would reach up into the sky. This alone is not an evil project. However, in doing this, the people disobey God's command to "be fruitful and multiply, and repopulate the earth" (Genesis 9:7). Instead they all want to settle in one place. In order to give the people a reason to spread and fill the earth, God confuses their languages. Suddenly, the people cannot easily work with each other, because they all speak differently. The small groups of people to whom God gives the same language assemble to travel together. 

The Tower of Babel is a short event, but it explains why people spread throughout the world and why we speak different languages. It also illustrates the folly of human pride. The Shinarites desired to build to a tower because they thought it would "make us famous and keep us from being spread all over the world" (Genesis 11:4). This verse shows that not only were the Shinarites purposefully disobeying God's command to spread throughout the earth, but they were doing it out of pride, to make a name for themselves, rather than to glorify God.