Charles Ellicott Commentary Genesis 11

The whole earth. —That is, all mankind. After giving the connection of the various races of the then known world, consisting of Armenia, the regions watered by the Tigris and Euphrates, the Arabian peninsula, the Nile valley, with the districts closely bordering on the Delta, Palestine, the Levant, and the islands of Cyprus, Rhodes, and Crete; with Lud on his journey to Asia Minor, and the Japhethites breaking their way into Europe through the country between the Caspian and the Black Sea: after this, we go back to the reason of this dispersion, which is found in the confusion of tongues.

Of one language, and of one speech. —Literally, of one lip, and of words one: that is, both the pronunciation and the vocabulary were identical. As regards this primitive language, whereas but a few years ago the differences between the Sanskrit and the Semitic tongues were regarded as irreconcilable, recent inquiries tend to show that both have a common basis.

As they journeyed. —The word literally refers to the pulling up of the tent-pegs, and sets the human family before us as a band of nomads, wandering from place to place, and shifting their tents as their cattle needed fresh pasture.

From the east. —So all the versions. Mount Ararat was to the north-west of Shinar, and while so lofty a mountain could not have been the spot where the ark rested, yet neither could any portion of Armenia or of the Carduchian mountains be described as to the east of Babylonia. The Chaldean legends make the ark rest on Mount Nizir, or Elwend, on the east of Assyria; and though Ararat may possibly signify Aryaverta, “Holy Land,” yet the transference of the name from Elwend to Armenia is not easily explicable. Moreover, the Bible elsewhere seems to point to Armenia as the cradle of the human race.

Most modern commentators, therefore, translate eastward, and such certainly is the meaning of the word in Genesis 13:11, where also the versions, excepting our own, render from the east.

Land of Shinar. —See on Genesis 10:10. The whole of Chaldea is a level plain, and the soil immensely rich, as it is an alluvial deposit, which still goes on forming at the head of the Persian Gulf, at the rate of a mile in a period estimated at from seventy to thirty years (Rawlinson, Anc. Mon., i. 4). A strip of land 130 miles in breadth has been added to the country, by the deposit of the earth washed down by the Tigris and Euphrates, since the time when Ur of the Chaldees was a great port.

Let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. —Hebrew, for a burning. Bricks in the East are usually simply dried in the sun, and this produces a sufficiently durable building material. It marks a great progress in the arts of civilization that these nomads had learned that clay when burned becomes insoluble; and their buildings with “slime,” or native pitch, for cement would be virtually indestructible. In fact, Mr. Layard says that at Birs-Nimroud it was scarcely possible to detach the bricks one from another, as the cement by which they were united was most tenacious (Nineveh and Babylon, p. 499).

A tower, whose top may reach to heaven. —The Hebrew is far less hyperbolical: namely, whose head (or top) is in the heavens, or skies, like the walls of the Canaanite cities (Deuteronomy 1:28).

The object of the builders was twofold: first, they wished to have some central beacon which might guide them in their return from their wanderings; and secondly, they had a distinctly ambitious object, for by remaining as one nation they would be able to reduce to obedience all the tribes now perpetually wandering away from them, and so would make them a name.

We may, indeed, dismiss the silly stories of Josephus about their defiance of God and Nimrod’s impiety, and the purpose of escaping a second deluge, for which there is not the least vestige of authority in the sacred record. But we undoubtedly find a political purpose of preventing that dispersion of mankind which God had commanded (Genesis 1:28), and of using the consequent aggregation of population for attaining empire.

There was probably some one able and ambitious mind at the bottom of this purpose, and doubtless it had very many advantages. For it is what is now called centralization, by which the individual sacrifices his rights to the nation, the provinces to the capital, and small nations are bound together in one empire, so that the force of the whole body may be brought to bear more rapidly and effectively in carrying out the will of the nation or of the ruler, as the case may be. Nimrod’s efforts at a later date were successful (Genesis 10:10–12); and when we remember the blood-stained course of some of his cities, we may well doubt whether, with all its present advantages, this centralization really promotes human happiness.

The Lord came down. —The narrative is given in that simple anthropological manner usual in the Book of Genesis, which so clearly presents to us God’s loving care for humanity, and here and in Genesis 18:21, the equity of Divine justice. For Jehovah is described as a mighty king who, hearing in His upper and heavenly dwelling of humanity’s ambitious purpose, determines to go and inspect the work in person, so that having seen, He may deal with the offenders justly. He views, therefore, “the city and the tower;” for the city was as important a part of their purpose as the tower, or even more so.

The tower, which, no doubt, was to be the citadel and protection of the city, was, for the city’s sake, to give the people a sense of strength and security. Having then inspected the tower and the city nestling around it, the Deity affirms that this centralisation is injurious to humanity’s best interests and must be counteracted by an opposite principle, namely, the tendency of humankind to make constant changes in language, and thereby to break up into different communities, kept permanently apart by the use of different tongues.

At present, “it is one people, and there is one lip to all of them, and this is what they begin to do,” etc. Already there are thoughts among them of universal empire. If in this way the spread of humankind is hindered, and its division into numerous nations—each contributing its share to the progress and welfare of the world—is stopped, humankind will remain a poor, debased creature and will utterly fail in accomplishing the purpose for which it was placed upon earth. “Go to,” therefore, He says, in irony of their twice-repeated phrase, “we will go down, and make their speech unintelligible to one another.” Now, though there is no assertion of a miracle here, we may well believe that there was an extraordinary quickening of a natural law that existed from the first.

This, however, is only a secondary question, and the main fact is the statement that the Divine means for counteracting humanity’s ambitious and ever-recurring dream of universal sovereignty is the law of diversity of speech. In ancient times, there was little to counteract this tendency; each city and petty district had its own dialect and looked with animosity upon its neighbours who differed from it in pronunciation, if not in vocabulary.

In the present day, there are counteracting influences. Great communities, by the use of the same Bible and the possession of the same classical literature, may long continue to speak the same language. Also, in times when communication is so easy, not only do people travel extensively, but newspapers and serials published at the centre are dispersed to the most distant parts of the world.

In olden times, it was not so; probably Isaiah would not have been easily understood thirty miles from Jerusalem, nor Demosthenes a few leagues from Athens. Without books or literature, a small band of families wandering with their cattle, with no communication with other tribes, would quickly modify both the grammar and the pronunciation of their language. When, after a year or two, they revisited the tower, they would feel like foreigners in the new city and quickly depart with the determination never to return.

To this day, diversity of language remains a powerful factor in keeping nations apart or in preventing parts of the same kingdom from agreeing wholeheartedly. And thus, at Babel, the first attempt to unite the human family into one whole came to an ignominious end.