Tower of Babel

Genesis 11 places the Tower of Babel a few generations after the Flood, on the plain of Shinar — the southern Mesopotamian alluvium where the great Sumerian ziggurats were built. "Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth" (Gen 11:4). God came down, confused their one language so that they could no longer understand each other, and scattered them — the city was abandoned and named Babel (from the Hebrew bālal, "to confuse"). Babel is the Hebrew name of Babylon. The narrative explains the origin of the world’s languages and the geographical scattering of the Table of Nations in Genesis 10, and it stands as the climactic act of rebellion that closes the primeval history. Ancient Mesopotamian ziggurats — stepped temple-towers with shrines on top — are widely understood to lie behind the description; the great ziggurat Etemenanki of Babylon, whose name means "house of the foundation of heaven and earth," is the most famous example. Pentecost, when the gospel is preached and understood in many tongues at once (Acts 2), undoes the curse of Babel.