And they said, “Come, let us build us a city, and a tower with its top in the sky, to make a name for ourselves; else we shall be scattered all over the world.”

Thus we will make for ourselves a name. This “name” was the idol that was to be placed in the tower. They hoped that on account of the grandeur of the tower and the city this idol would come to be recognized universally as the supreme deity. In this way the king of the city would achieve dominion over the entire world.

יהוה came down to look at the city and tower that humanity had built,

הן עם אחד, the only way I can stop them from carrying out their unanimously approved plan is to sow the seeds of discord between them. The instrument of bringing this about is to confuse their language. Basically, people’s disagreements are either religious, (philosophical) in nature, or they result from misunderstanding what they mean when they speak. These people had been of one mind in matters of religion, seeing that they had all agreed with the mistaken idolatrous philosophy shared by mankind at that time. In spite of such apparently good reasons for disagreeing with one another, they did not misunderstand each other.

וזה החלו לעשות, and yet they all agree to begin this project.

and יהוה said, “If, as one people with one language for all, this is how they have begun to act, then nothing that they may propose to do will be out of their reach.

ONE PEOPLE. They have one religion. Different religions create jealousy and hatred among people. The same is true with regard to different languages. That is why the king of Persia and Media commanded that every man should bear rule in his own house, and speak according to the language of his people (Es. 1:22). The heh of hachillam (what they begin) is vocalized with a pattach because of the chet which follows it.

ועתה לא יבצר מהם, in view of these circumstances, if left alone, they would complete what they have set out to do, so that this form of idolatry they have agreed on would henceforth be something embraced by all of mankind. Not a single one of them would turn to the Creator of the universe and realise that He, and He alone, is the Creator of the entire universe. On the other hand, the opposite will occur if discord will break out among them regarding the supremacy of any of the deities versus the competing ones. In such a scenario, every nation would believe that there is one deity that is superior to all the various national deities, whose concern is only with the particular nation worshipping that deity. All the minor deities would have to subordinate themselves to the power of that super-deity. The prophet Maleachi 1,11 expresses this in the following words: ”for from where the sun rises to where it sets, My name is honoured among the nations;” כי ממזרח שמש ועד מבואו גדול שמי בגוים.

Let us, then, go down and confound their speech there, so that they shall not understand one another’s speech.”

[AND THERE CONFOUND THEIR LANGUAGE.] All the grammarians claim that ve-navelah (and confound) is a nifal. They compare it to ve-navekah (and shall be made empty) in And the spirit of Egypt shall be made empty (ve-navekah) (Is. 19:3) and to navelah (fadeth) in The earth fainteth and fadeth away (navelah) (Is. 24:4). However, their interpretation is farfetched. Why would the Bible say: Come, let us go down and their language will be confounded, when their language was not confounded because God and the angels went down? Ve-navelah can only be interpreted as an active verb. Proof of this is Scripture’s stating at the close of this incident, because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth (v. 9). The following is then the grammatical explanation of ve-navelah. It is a hifil. Scripture should have employed the entire root and read ve-navlilah, or ve-navellah if one of the two lameds of its double root was swallowed. In the latter case it would have followed the paradigm of ve-nasebbah (let us bring back) in and let us bring back (ve-nasebbah) the ark of our God (I Chron. 13:3). Our word reads ve-navelah because one of the lameds of the root was dropped without the remaining lamed receiving a dagesh forte to make up for it. The sages who translated the Torah into Greek correctly rendered ve-navelah as I will confound, rather than we will confound. If the above mentioned grammarians are correct, why did the sages omit the nun? Some say that the people building the tower started hating each other and each one invented a new language. Others say that the One who grants knowledge to man caused them to forget their language. In my opinion, they were first scattered. After their dispersion Nimrod ruled over Babel and other kings arose. With the passage of time and the death of the first generation to be scattered, the original language was forgotten. God scattered the people for their own benefit. He similarly said, and replenish the earth (Gen. 1:28).

That is why it was called Babel, because there יהוה confounded the speech of the whole earth; and from there יהוה scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

ומשם הפיצם AND FROM THENCE DID THE LORD SCATTER THEM —This teaches that they have no portion in the world to come (Sanhedrin 107b). Which sin was greater: that of the generation of the Flood or that of the generation of the Dispersion? The former did not stretch forth their hands against God; the latter did stretch forth their hands against God to war against him (surely, then, the sin of the generation of the Dispersion was greater) and yet the former (the generation of the Flood) were drowned and these did not perish from the world! But the reason is that the generation of the Flood were violent robbers and there was strife among them, and therefore they were destroyed; but these conducted themselves in love and friendship, as it is said, “They were one people and had one language”. — You may learn from this how hateful to God is strife and how great is peace (Genesis Rabbah 38:6).

Love all people. How so? This teaches us that a person should love all people and not hate anyone. For so we find with the people of the Generation of the Dispersion, that because they loved one another, the Holy Blessed One did not want to wipe them off the face of the earth, but instead only scattered them to the four corners of the world. But the people of Sodom, because they hated one another, the Holy Blessed One took them out of both this world and the World to Come, as it says (Genesis 13:13), “And the people of Sodom were very wicked and sinful against God.” “Sinful” – this is sexual transgression; “against God” – this the desecration of God’s name; “very” – this means that they sinned intentionally. From this you learn that because they hated one another, the Holy Blessed One took them out of both this world and the World to Come.7.