“That is why it is called Babel, for there the LORD confused the language of the whole world, and from that place the LORD scattered them over the face of all the earth.”

Genesis 11:9

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Go deeper on this verse (5)

What was really wrong with building the tower?
The problem with the tower was refusal. God had spoken, and a whole civilisation heard Him and decided it would rather not listen; they wanted to be known by a name they made for themselves. To know God is to take what He has said and shape your life around it. Babel took what God said and built the opposite in brick.
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What does the name Babel actually mean?
In Babylonian the name Babel meant something grand, bab-ilu, the gate of god, a fitting title for a temple-tower. Genesis ties the name by sound to the Hebrew verb balal, to mix or confuse. The builders wanted a name meaning gate of god; their monument to their own greatness got a name that sounds like babble.
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Connection with the nations and their languages
Genesis 10 keeps repeating the phrase "according to their languages" as it lists the nations. God scattered those languages at Babel, and He handed them back at Pentecost, when people from every nation heard the disciples "declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues" (Acts 2:11).
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Connection with Nimrod, the mighty hunter
Nimrod, the mighty hunter of Genesis 10, began his kingdom in Babylon in the land of Shinar (Genesis 10:10). On that same plain people built the tower, and the LORD confused their speech (balal in Hebrew), which is why the place is called Babel. The empire of the mighty hunter and the tower of the name-makers rose from the same ground.
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Connection with Jacob’s ladder
The builders of Babel wanted a tower "that reaches to the heavens" (Genesis 11:4), and in Hebrew Jacob's ladder is described with the same words, its rosh (H7218), its top, in the heavens. The real gate of heaven was found on an empty hillside in Canaan, with the LORD speaking from the top of the stairway.
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