40 Old Testament Stories: Tower of Babel

This story is often treated as an "origin myth".  In other words, like many stories in other cultures, it is read as telling the story of how there came to be different languages.

I think that it is as much about the danger of human arrogance as it is about how there came to be French, Spanish, English, German etc...

This story happens between the story of Noah and the Ark and the beginning of the Abraham stories.

So on one end of it we have God running out of patience with human wickedness and destroying most of life with a massive flood.  On the other end of the story we have God entering into a Covenant with a specific human being and his descendants (tune in next week for more on that).

So, shortly after people have just begun to recover from the flood, they try to build a city and, through their own power, to secure their future.  In other words, to protect themselves from the will of God.

This is a common theme in scripture - watch out for thinking that you have any real power, God doesn't react will to human arrogance.

Notice, again God talking to himself in the third person: "...Come, let's go down and mix up their language ..."