The Book of Genesis tells the story of how the world’s people moved into the Plain in Shinar, believed to be Sumer (in modern Iraq). They decided to build a city (Babel) to unite humanity along with a tower that would reach Heaven.
God confused them by giving them different languages to force them to scatter, based on the reasoning, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is what they begin to do; and now nothing will be withholden from them, which they purpose to do.”
Similar reasoning was given for prohibiting eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. In the Old Testament, God worried that humanity would become so powerful as to challenge him or refute his control.
Many translations use the word “us” to describe God’s response, as in, “Come, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.” At the time, God sometimes spoke on behalf of a court of heavenly beings. An interesting side note.
An archaeologist translated tablets that provide an Assyrian version of the story, likely to have inspired the version preserved by the Israelites.
Check it out for yourself here.
