The NIV Study Bible

genesis chapter xi

The Tower of Babel

11:1 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech.

11:2 As men moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar[a] and settled there.

11:3 They said to each other, "Come, let's make bricks and bake them thoroughly." They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar.

11:4 Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth."

11:5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building.

11:6 The Lord said, "If as one people speaking the same language, they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.

11:7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other."

11:8 So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city.

11:9 That is why it was called Babel[b] — because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

From Shem to Abram

11:10 This is the account of Shem.

Two years after the flood, when Shem was 100 years old, he became the father[c] of Arphaxad.

11:11 And after he became the father of Arphaxad, Shem lived 500 years and had other sons and daughters.

11:12 When Arphaxad had lived 35 years, he became the father of Shelah.

11:13 And after he became the father of Shelah, Arphaxad lived 403 years and had other sons and daughters.

11:14 When Shelah had lived 30 years, he became the father of Eber.

11:15 And after he became the father of Eber, Shelah lived 403 years and had other sons and daughters.

11:16 When Eber had lived 34 years, he became the father of Peleg.

11:17 And after he became the father of Peleg, Eber lived 430 years and had other sons and daughters.

11:18 When Peleg had lived 30 years, he became the father of Reu.

11:19 And after he became the father of Reu, Peleg lived 209 years and had other sons and daughters.

11:20 When Reu had lived 32 years, he became the father of Serug.

11:21 And after he became the father of Serug, Reu lived 207 years and had other sons and daughters.

11:22 When Serug had lived 30 years, he became the father of Nahor.

11:23 And after he became the father of Nahor, Serug lived 200 years and had other sons and daughters.

11:24 When Nahor had lived 29 years, he became the father of Terah.

11:25 And after he became the father of Terah, Nahor lived 119 years and had other sons and daughters.

11:26 After Terah lived 70 years, he became the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran.

11:27 This is the account of Terah.

Terah became the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran. And Haran became the father of Lot.

11:28 While his father Terah was still alive, Haran died in Ur of the Chaldeans, in the land of his birth.

11:29 Abram and Nahor both married. The name of Abram's wife saw Sarai, and the name of Nahor's wife was Milcah; she was the daughter of Haran, the father of both Milcah and Iscah.

11:30 Now Sarai was barren; she had no children.

11:31 Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, the wife of his son Abram, and together they set out from ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan. But then they came to Haran, they settled there.

11:32 Terah lived 205 years, and he died in Haran.

Footnotes

[a] that is Babylonia

[b] that is Babylon; Babel sounds like the Hebrew for confused

[c] Father may mean ancestor; also, in verses 11:25

Other Notes

verse 3 — brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. Stone and mortar were used as building materials in Canaan. Stone was scarce in Mesopotamia, however, so mud brick and tar were used (as indicated also by archaeological excavations).

verse 4 — us... ourselves... we... ourselves. The people's plan was egotistical and proud.

tower. The typical Mesopotamian temple tower, known as a ziggurat, was a square at the base and had sloping, stepped sides that led upward to a small shrine at the top.

reaches to heaven. A similar ziggurat may be described in 28:12. Other Mesopotamian ziggurats were given names demonstrating that they, too, were meant to serve as staircases from earth to heaven: "The House of the Link between Heaven and Earth" (at Larsa), "The House of the Seven Guides of Heaven and Earth" (at Babylon), "The House of the Mountain of the Universe" (at Asshur).

name. At Babel, the rebellious human race undertook a united and Godless effort to establish for themselves, by a titanic enterprise, a world renown by which they would dominate God's creation.

verse 6 — If... then. If the whole human race remained united in the proud attempt to take its destiny into its own hands and, by its self-centered efforts, to seize the reins of history, there would be no limit to its unrestrained rebellion against God. A Godless human kingdom would displace and exclude the kingdom of God.

verse 9 — Babel. The word is of Akkadian origin and means "gateway to a god".

confused, The Hebrew word used here (balal) sounds like "Babel," the Hebrew word for Babylon, and the origin of the English word "babel".

verse 24 — Nahor... became the father of Terah. In c. 2296 B.C.

verse 26 — Terah... became the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran. As in the case of Shem, Ham, and Japheth, the names of the three sons may not be in chronological order by age. Haran died while his father was still alive.

became the father of Abram. In c. 2166 B.C.

verse 28 — Ur of the Chaldeans. Possibly in northern Mesopotamia, but more likely the site on the Euphrates in southern Iraq excavated by Leonard Woolley between 1922 and 1934. Ruins and artifacts from ur reveal a civilization and culture that reached high levels before Abram's time. King Ur-Nammu, who may have been Abram's contemporary, is famous for his law code.

verse 30 — Sarai was barren. The sterility of Abram's wife emphasized the fact that God's people would not come by natural generation from the post-Babel peoples. God was bringing a new humanity into being, of whom Abram was father (17:5), just as Adam and Noah were fathers of the fallen human.

verse 31 — they came to Haran. In Hebrew, the name of the town is spelled differently from that of Abram's brother (v. 26). The moon god was worshipped at both Ur and Haran, and since Terah was an idolater (see Jos 24:2) he probably felt at home in either place. Haran was a flourishing caravan city in the 19th century B.C. In the 18th century, it was ruled by Amorites.