The laconic Tower of Babel story in Genesis has always been a renewable resource of interpretation. From the ancient period onwards, biblical interpreters offered a healthy variety of explanations -- all only hinted at in Scripture -- for God’s ire at the "Generation of Dispersion." Among them: The tower-builders planned to breach heaven and replace God with a new deity; fearing another flood, they sought to buttress the celestial canopy, or to build a new (this time stationary) "ark" well above the earth's high water mark; or, the early Babylonians wanted a monument to their own glory in the form of a great city, but a city which would expand upwards instead of outwards, thus violating God’s command to “multiply and fill the Earth." According to this last interpretation, dispersion was for humanity's own good, not so much a punishment as the fulfillment of their manifest destiny.
A
recent iteration of the idea that God disrupted the tower project for man's benefit reads the dispersion story as a rejection of totalitarian groupthink
and a celebration of diversity. In this retelling, God prefers a “salad” of humanity over the conformist
melting pot.
With its nod to cultural pluralism, this interpretation will resonate with modern audiences. As contemporary dersah, it works very well. But as an explanation for the scriptural purpose of the story, I think it falls short. And while this won't detract from its value or appeal, the idea is also an old one -- it has antecedents in earlier Jewish interpretation.
In the sixteenth century, Obadiah Seforno wrote that the dispersion was, indeed, supposed to diversify mankind. But he adds this plot twist: God’s original idea of human diversity was, in fact, polytheism. Man wanted to replace God with a single false deity but, at this early stage
of history, he was meant to worship many gods. By means of this polytheistic error, mankind was supposed to arrive at the idea of the one true God.
In Seforno’s view, this was a primarily theological, rather than social dispersion, which will ultimately fulfill the prophetic vision of humanity united under
the banner of one God.
A nineteenth-century version of the “anti-groupthink” interpretation, in the commentary of R. Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin (Netziv), emphasizes the ideological conformism and political authoritarianism of the tower-builders. Netziv’s Babel was an aspiring thought-police state. First, the Babylonians allowed no citizen to leave. Later, the builders envisioned a watchtower designed to spy on the city’s inhabitants and thereby enforce their monolithic ideology. Dissent was punishable by death in the fiery furnace – the same furnace, of course, that baked bricks for the great metropolis – as illustrated by Abraham’s sentence for rejecting idolatry (Netziv's updated "midrash" combines two separate rabbinic traditions about Nimrod, the supposed founding ruler of Babel: Nimrod himself instigated the tower project; Nimrod sent Abraham into the fiery furnace for refusing to renounce monotheism). God foresaw, Netziv says, the inherent immorality of a totalitarian state and put an end to the plan. Almost certainly, this is a veiled critique of the Tsarist Russian Empire in which Netziv lived.
My
own inclination, however, is to look for the meaning of such biblical stories not in their implications for contemporary social issues, but in
their original scriptural setting (not to be confused with historical setting).
Yehezkel Kaufmann wrote that the first few chapters of Genesis are a series of etiological tales attributing the origin of evil to man’s rebellion against God. Adam and Eve brought death upon humanity by violating God’s command; and, by challenging God’s reign on earth, the tower builders gave rise to idolatry and social conflict. God’s response in both cases is to cut man down to size, reminding him that despite his remarkable achievements, he remains dust and ashes, a not-God: וַיֵּרֶד ה’ לִרְאֹת אֶת־הָעִיר וְאֶת־הַמִּגְדָּל אֲשֶׁר בָּנוּ בְּנֵי הָאָדָם׃.
Note the expression בְּנֵי
הָאָדָם -- an unmistakable reference, by opposition, to בְּנֵי הָאֱ-לֹהִים (see Gen. 6:2-4; Ps. 82:6-7; Job 1:6, 2:1), the Divine Council God consults before man is first placed (in the creation story), and later reminded of his place (in the Tower story), in the hierarchy of being. The plurals in both stories imply God's collaboration with his angelic council: “Let
us make man” just before man’s creation; “let us go down and confound their speech”
just before his dispersion.
The early chapters of Genesis describe two pivotal events in human evolution (parallel, not coincidentally, to critical stages of early child development): The acquisition of morality and language. In each case, man has just acquired a godlike talent and God must intervene to prevent any further breach of the human-divine boundary. Parallel verses from each biblical narrative highlight their structural and linguistic similarities:
וַיֹּאמֶר ה’ אֱ-לֹהִים הֵן הָאָדָם הָיָה כְּאַחַד מִמֶּנּוּ לָדַעַת טוֹב וָרָע וְעַתָּה פֶּן־יִשְׁלַח יָדוֹ וְלָקַח גַּם מֵעֵץ הַחַיִּים וְאָכַל וָחַי לְעֹלָם׃
(Gen. 3:22)
וַיֹּאמֶר ה’ הֵן עַם אֶחָד וְשָׂפָה אַחַת לְכֻלָּם וְזֶה הַחִלָּם לַעֲשׂוֹת וְעַתָּה לֹא־יִבָּצֵר מֵהֶם כֹּל אֲשֶׁר יָזְמוּ לַעֲשׂוֹת
(Gen. 11:6)
God blocks Adam’s path to the Tree of Life because the quasi-divine combination of morality and immortality would make humans nearly indistinguishable from angels. In our own story, God worries that human beings -- unconstrained in technological skill and single-minded in language and purpose -- might become effectively omnipotent.
Whether
this interpretation conveys a contemporary message (in fact, it does) is beside the point, at least
for me. But as peshat, I find it satisfying, even inspiring, on
its own.
