BABEL

(Baʹbel) [Confusion].

One of the first cities to be built after the Flood. Here God “confused the language of all the earth.” (Ge 11:9) The name is derived from the verb ba·lalʹ, meaning “confuse.” Local citizens, thinking of their city as God’s seat of government, claimed that the name was compounded from Bab (Gate) and ilu (God), signifying “Gate of God.”

The approximate time of such building may be drawn from the following information: Peleg lived from 2269 to 2030 B.C.E. His name meant “Division,” for “in his days the earth [that is, “earth’s population”] was divided”; Jehovah “scattered them from there over all the surface of the earth.” (Ge 10:25; 11:9) A text of Sharkalisharri, king of Agade (Accad) in patriarchal times, mentions his restoring a temple-tower at Babylon, implying that such a structure existed prior to his reign.