The Tower of Babel

We know relatively little about the Tower of Babel from the scriptures. According to the account in Genesis, it was built after the flood in “a plain in the land of Shinar” when the people said to themselves, “Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” So from this the goal of the tower seemed to have been to unite themselves and to not be scattered upon the earth. The record continues, “The Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded. And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.” The Lord didn’t want them all united together in one place, and so He confounded their language: “Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth” (Genesis 11:4-9). This is all that Genesis records about the Tower of Babel. I had always thought the account mentioned the destruction of the tower, but it does not. It only records that the people were scattered from the tower with different languages.

               The Tower of Babel is of course important to the Book of Mormon and it is mentioned several times, particularly in connection with the story of the Jaredites. In the title page written by Moroni, he mentioned “the people of Jared, who were scattered at the time the Lord confounded the language of the people, when they were building a tower to get to heaven.” Amaleki mentioned of Coriantumr that “his first parents came out from the tower, at the time the Lord confounded the language of the people” (Omni 1:22). Mormon confirmed that the building of the tower was inspired by Satan: “And also it is that same being who put it into the hearts of the people to build a tower sufficiently high that they might get to heaven” (Helaman 6:28). Moroni also wrote of the tower in his account of the Jaredites, saying, “Jared came forth with his brother and their families, with some others and their families, from the great tower, at the time the Lord confounded the language of the people, and swore in his wrath that they should be scattered upon all the face of the earth” (Ether 1:33). Like the Bible, the Book of Mormon does not mention the destruction of the tower but focuses on the fact that the Lord confounded the languages of the people at the tower. Other sources such as the Book of Jubilees suggests that God overturned the tower with a great wind. Either way, clearly the Lord was not happy with the people at the tower because of their unwillingness to spread out across the land. They did not want to be “scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth,” perhaps suggesting that this is exactly what the Lord had commanded them to do. The Jaredites, though, were willing to follow the Lord and be scattered by Him to a faraway location that proved to be a great promised land. Perhaps one of the lessons from the tower then is that we need to be able to go and do what the Lord commands even when it takes us out of our comfort zone; we need to be willing to symbolically “go forth into the wilderness, yea, into that quarter where there never had man been” (Ether 2:5). The Lord wants us to stretch and grow here on earth, to learn new things and be tested and tried, not to sit comfortably with everyone else under a protective tower. To reach our promised land, we may have mountains to move, wildernesses to traverse, and great oceans to cross, and the Lord will “not suffer that [we] should stop” before we reach it (Ether 2:7).