I ran across another really interesting interpretation of the Babel story on Twitter, of all places. This one is from a thread by AriLamm.

He says anyone wanting to understand the story has to address three principal questions:

1) What did Babel’s builders do wrong?

2) Why did God punish them as He did?

3) What’s the story’s message

Those three things turn out to be difficult to answer.

Was Babel an example of brotherly, public-spirited society dedicated to building society? If so, why would that anger God? Is Babel a story of impious hubris? Is Babel a story of unified builders challenging God for supremacy? Lamm says he doesn’t believe so.

The story in chapter 11 starts with “Now the whole world had one language and common speech.”, which seems to contradict chapter 10:5 where we were told Noah’s descendants spread out into their territories… “each with its own language”. So did the earth already have many languages? Or just one?

He then goes through various references and comes to the conclusion that the description of Babel is one of empire based on exploitation. The reference to build bricks is likely due to slave labor, and the one language wasn’t a description of a golden age of mutual intelligibility, it was the enforced uniformity.

God had told humans to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth; Babel was an attempt to consolidate power through maintaining control.

He goes through and answers the obvious pushbacks on his interpretation. Your mileage may vary, but I thought it was an interesting interpretation and one that strikes me as relatively plausible too.

You can find the thread by looking on Twitter for @AriLamm. It’s worth the read.