The Tower of Babel

(Gen. 9:29, 11:1-9)      

  Noe lived for about nine hundred and fifty years.  After his death, many of his descendants forgot about God, because they became proud and ungrateful.

At that time, the whole world was of one speech and one language. One group of people who found themselves in the great plain of Shinar set to work to build a great city, and in the midst of it, a tower that would reach up to heaven.

And the Lord God came down to  see that tower and said: "Behold, the people are one and their language is one, and this they begin to do. Hereafter, they will no longer be restrained from whatever they might think of doing. Let us therefore confound their speeches that they may not understand one another."

Thus, the pride of those people was punished. God made them talk in different languages so that they could not "understand one another. Giving up their plan of the tower, which they had already started, the builders went each his own way and were scattered all over the world.

This incident happened in the place called Babel.  There, the Lord brought about the confusion of tongues and the separation of mankind into nations. There has been much inquiry concerning the location of the tower of Babel. Modern scientists, digging in the dust-covered ruins of old cities, have found remains of several inn towers not unlike the one mentioned in the Bible.