THE BABEL TOWER – A DEEPER LOOK
Why did the wicked generation of the Tower of Babel
escape annihilation? How were they
less sinful than the Generation of the Flood?
According to R’ Isaac Alfasi and R’ Ovadia Sforno, the simple answer to this question would be: because G‑D had promised Noah that there would never be another total annihilation like that of the Flood. However, most of our Sages emphasise that G‑D’s assurance was limited to not inflicting a flood upon the world (which reflects the literal meaning of Gen. 9:11 and 9:15).
Indeed to suggest that G‑D promised He will never again destroy the world could be viewed as problematic as it might imply the doctrine of the eternity of matter which is certainly not one to which Judaism subscribes. G‑D is, as Rambam (Maimonides) declares in his fourth principle of faith, “the first and the last”. Or as we recite daily in Adon Olam: Akharei kikhlot hakol levado yimlokh nora. “After everything will cease to be, alone He will reign!” The prophet Isaiah (51:6) appears to confirm this belief when he declares: …The heavens will dissipate like smoke and the earth will wear out like a garment, and its inhabitants will die as well; but My salvation will be forever (in the spiritual realms) and My righteousness will not be broken. And even in the immediate context of our sidra, G‑D adds the caveat: “In the manner I have done, I shall not again smite all living. So long as the world exists, seed-time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease” (Gen 8:21-22).
So theoretically, yes, G‑D could have destroyed the world, terminally or otherwise, in the generation of the tower of Babel – albeit that it would have needed to be a destruction by means other than floodwaters.
But He didn’t. And the reason advanced by the Midrash (cited by Rashi) as to why He didn’t destroy the Babel generation – despite the fact that they openly challenged and mocked G‑D by seeking to build a tower “with its summit in the heavens” – is that, for all their wickedness, they worked with unity of purpose (at least in the beginning) in order to achieve their (albeit unholy) aim. From this we see, says the Midrash “how hateful is brotherly strife and how great is peace!”
Yet this brotherhood did not last. Most of us have a mental picture, carried with us since childhood, of everyone suddenly babbling in an unintelligible tongue out of nowhere. Ibn Ezra has a more sophisticated understanding of the episode. “What happened” he says “is that G‑D instilled a sudden feeling of animosity among them which made each of them wish to go out and devise a new language!”
The Bekhor Shor, a 12th-century scholar from Orleans in France, advances a different and quite ingenious explanation. Based upon an observation in the Talmud Yerushalmi, (tractate Megila) that early man had already developed and refined seventy languages, Bekhor Shor deduces that as they were plotting to ‘overthrow’ G‑D, every plotter suddenly found himself unable to communicate in any language except his own native tongue. He forgot all the other 69 languages and remembered only his own!
In other words, reading between the lines in a deeper sense, the project which started with such co-operation and unity of purpose floundered in the end because each and every participant forgot his original supposed motive for participation, namely the betterment of society, and became concerned only with his own nationalistic self-interest – he was only able to speak his own language – all communication broke down, and the project met a catastrophic end.
So there we have it! G‑D leads us in the way we wish to go (Makot 10b). The Babelites’ sense of brotherhood and comradeship was only at surface level, fostered only for the purposes of their utilitarian designs. Indeed Pirkei Avot declares: “If love is dependent on a (material) cause (davar), if the cause dies so will the love!” (5:19).
As the world prepares for more G20 summits, it is timely to consider the davar, the motive, the cause behind it all. If the aims are purely economic, political and humanistic, we cannot expect the unity and harmony to outlive the cause. Not until every knee bends and every tongue pledges allegiance to the First Cause, the true Super-Power of the world will unity and harmony (tikun olam) become a blessed and permanent fact of life.