~~~~~Lesson: The Tower of Babel

1) Temples in Mesopotamia at the time were built in an “upward” pattern with temple towers (or ziggurats).  Babel, in this case, is a reference to the origin of the name of the city Babylon.

2) There is debate over what the exact meaning of the people “building a tower” is.

            *It refers to the actual building of temples to gods that are false.

            *It is a symbolic representation of man’s growing evil.

            *The story is simply a unique way of explaining the multiple languages spoken by men.

            *Or combination of the above.

Question: Which of the “meanings” do you subscribe to?


~Reading: Genesis 11:1-9- The Tower of Babel

(1-9) The whole world spoke the same language, using the same words. While men were migrating in the east, they came upon a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there. They said to one another, "Come, let us mold bricks and harden them with fire." They used bricks for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said,

"Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the sky, and so make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered all over the earth."
The Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the men had built. Then the

Lord said: "If now, while they are one people, all speaking the same language, they have started to do this, nothing will later stop them from doing whatever they presume to do. Let us then go down and there confuse their language, so that one will not understand what another says." Thus the Lord scattered them from there all over the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the speech of all the world. It was from that place that he scattered them all over the Earth.