The Tower of Babel: Genesis 11.1-9
Everyone on the earth speaks the same language. They all migrate from the east to a plain in Shinar and settle there. They decide to make some bricks and "burn them thoroughly." Then with their bricks an bitumen, they say, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth."
So these people are afraid of being scattered upon the face of the earth, unable to communicate with each other. Here comes a bit of situational irony. The Lord comes down to earth to check up on the mortals and decides that one people with one language is too much. "...this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come let us [the divine court] go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another's speech."
The jealous Lord does exactly this. They are forced to discontinue construction. The abandoned site is called Babel, because in addition to displacing all these people, the Lord confuses (the Hebrew word babal means confuse) the languages of the earth.
Remember that these people want their own name. That will be important later in the bible story.
The Harper Collins Study Bible points out a really nice symmetry to the story. Here is a graphical representation I created to visually represent the editors' point. In fact - hey - it resembles a ziggurat!
Harper Collins pits the left side, humankind, with the right side, Lord. The point of symmetry, of course, is in the middle of the story, when God descends to Earth and sees what is happening. Allow me to expand on Harper Collins' ideas. If we view this as the story of humanity, we can see humankind's accomplishments building to the point of symmetry, which is not the point of climax. The point of climax occurs when the Lord corrupts languages and flings people to many corners of the earth. So really, our story resembles a sine curve:
(Thanks Wikipedia and my high school calculus teacher Mr. Messare! Who says math doesn't apply to real life and/or the bible?)
For argument's sake, let's bound the graph along the x-axis from 0 to 3π/2. Humans (the red sine curve) start at (0, 0). That is a decent level to be at. As they build, their potential for power grows, until God sees them at π/2. God plots their downfall from π/2 to π. He executes it at π, until humankind is at its lowest point, 3π/2, a state of confusion and disintegration.
If you are not thoroughly confused, I apologize. Perhaps the following will correct this.
Genealogy of Shem: Genesis 11.10-32
Below find the genealogy map, today's descendants in burgundy.
Question for any religion scholars or general knowledgeable people out there: Genesis 11.29 states that Milcah is the "daughter of Haran the father of Milcah and Iscah." I assume Milcah's father is of no relation to Haran the father of Lot, but the text is unclear. For now, these are two separate Harans until proven otherwise.
Sarai, of course, is barren. This is also important in the story.
Oh, and this: Terah takes Abram (his son), Lot (his grandson), and Sarai to Canaan, but they decide to settle in Haran. In fact, this is where Terah dies at the age of 250.
Tomorrow: The story of Abram.
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