Babylon (Gen 11:1–9)
The Tower of Babylon
Today we are starting Genesis 11, and in particular vv. 1–9 of the chapter, the short but incredibly famous story of the Tower of Babylon.
Instead of beginning as I normally do, with our usual focus on the Hebrew words of the biblical verse that we’re examining, this time I have to talk about the subtitle I’ve switched to since finishing the Table of Nations. What we’re going to be reading is the story of the Tower of Babel, isn’t it? Some people rhyme it with “table,” others with “babble.” That last rhyme is for a good reason.
We’ve seen exactly that word בָּבֶל bavel mentioned in 10:10, where it was the first city of Nimrod’s country and it was given its standard English translation:
The first city of his country was Babylon.
וַתְּהִ֨י רֵאשִׁ֤ית מַמְלַכְתּוֹ֙ בָּבֶ֔ל
In the next post, I noted that we would see that word bavel once again in the last verse of the upcoming tower story, and I explained:
That’s more or less the original name of the city in Akkadian as well: Bāb-ilu, literally “gate of God.” Anyone who knows some Hebrew can easily recognize that ilu = אֵל el ‘god, power’. And a little bit of familiarity with the Talmud will remind you that Baba (or Bava) refers to the beginning, middle, and end “gates” of the enormous tractate of the Babylonian Talmud called Nezikin (“Damages”).
The name Babylon, then, means “gate of God.” Think that’s an appropriate name for the location of the tower in our story? I do too. Yet a glance at 50 or 60 English translations of 11:9 turned up just two that translate bavel as Babylon: the Good News Translation and something called the Christian Standard Bible.
What makes that more surprising is that we are not merely talking about a real city, one that is still known to us, but also a real tower. Herodotus (Histories 1:181) saw it:
