Seder 9: Gen 11---The Rebellion at Babel

Genesis 11 describes a rebellion that took place at some point after the Flood.  If Gen 10:25 is a reference to this event, then according to the Masoretic Text, the rebellion took place a little over a hundred years after the Flood, but the Septuagint places it over 600 years after the flood.  (For more on the chronological issues here, see for example this link.)

People had been commanded to "fill the earth" after the Flood (Gen 9:1), but a group at Shinar resisted this command and united to build a structure traditionally known as the "tower of Babel".

Scholars today recognize this structure as a ziggurat.  A ziggurat was shaped like a pyramid and filled with dirt on the inside.  On the outside was a staircase, at the top of which food and a bed were provided for the god that they hoped to attract to come down to them.  Ziggurats were built next to temples for the worship of that particular god.  Behind their construction was the premise that gods had needs that people could meet, and then these gods could then be manipulated.  (For a good discussion of these things in Gen 11, see for example John Walton's commentary on the book of Genesis.)

In response, God says to his heavenly host,"Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech" (v 7).  At that point the nations are scattered (v 8).  Elsewhere, the Bible indicates that God delegated responsibility to supervise various nations to members of his heavenly host, reserving for himself the project of working through Abraham and the nation of Israel (Deut 32:8-9).  The description of that project begins in Gen 12.