What happened at the Tower of Babel?
"'Come on! Let’s make bricks and bake them well.' They used bricks instead of stones. They used tar to hold the bricks together. Then they said, 'Come on! Let’s build a city for ourselves. Let’s build a tower that reaches to the sky. We’ll make a name for ourselves. Then we won’t be scattered over the whole earth'" (Genesis 11:3-4).
"But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. He said, 'All these people are united and speak the same language. That is why they can do all this. Now they will be able to do anything they plan. Come on! Let us go down and mix up their language. Then they will not be able to understand one other'" (Genesis 11:5-7).
"So the Lord scattered them from there over the whole earth. And they stopped building the city. There the Lord mixed up the language of the whole world. That’s why the city was called Babel. From there the Lord scattered them over the whole earth" (Genesis 11:8-9).
At the Tower of Babel, God confused the languages of the world. Before the Tower of Babel, God sent a flood upon the earth. After the flood, God told Noah’s sons and their wives to repopulate the world (Genesis 9:1). Instead of listening to God, mankind chose to rebel. Mankind chose to build a big tower, which is now known as the Tower of Babel. The Bible tells us the people said, "Come on! Let’s build a city for ourselves. Let’s build a tower that reaches to the sky. We’ll make a name for ourselves. Then we won’t be scattered over the whole earth" (Genesis 11:4).
The people had built the big tower to be a symbol of their greatness. Mankind was once again claiming themselves to be better than God. Due to their sin, God confused all of the languages of mankind. In this way, the people could no longer communicate with each other. What became of this change was that those who spoke the same language migrated toward the same parts of the world and separated themselves from those who didn’t speak the same language.
The Tower of Babel is why we have different languages today. Each language is unique, but at one time, it is possible we all spoke the same language. Due to the language barrier now, it can be hard to talk to other people who speak a different language than us. We can learn other languages, but it can take a lot of time and practice.
