Genesis 11:1–4 does not teach that early mankind stupidly attempted to build a tower which would reach into outer space! Especially to be noted are the words in verse four “may reach.” They are in italics in the KJV to show they are supplied by the translators and therefore not in [p. 1199] the original Hebrew text. In reality the phrase should read “whose top is heaven.”

Archaeological evidence suggests that the Tower of Babel was in reality a building given over to astrology, or the heathen worship of the heavens. Among the ruins of ancient Babylon is a building 153 feet high with a 400–foot base. It was constructed of dried bricks in seven stages, to correspond with the known planets to which they were dedicated. The lowermost was black, the color of Saturn, the next orange, for Jupiter, the third red, for Mars, and so on. These stages were surmounted by a lofty tower, on the summit of which were the signs of the Zodiac. Dr. Donald Barnhouse affirms this interpretation:

It was an open, defiant turning to Satan and the beginning of devil worship. This is why the Bible everywhere pronounces a curse on those who consult the sun, the moon, and the stars of heaven. (Genesis: A Devotional Exposition, p. 71)

Years prior to building the tower of Babel, the world’s first murderer, Cain, heard God say, “A fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth” (Gen 4:12). Now Cain’s spiritual children were rebelling against the same God, but they were anxious to stay together, lest they share Cain’s fate (Gen 11:4).

German theologian Erich Sauer likens the multiplicity of languages to a broken mirror: The original language in which Adam in Paradise had named all the animals was, as it were, a great mirror in which the whole of nature was accurately reflected. But now God shattered this mirror, and each people retained only a fragment of it, the one a larger, the other a smaller piece, and now each people sees only a piece of the whole, but never the whole completely. (Dawn of World Redemption, p. 82)

Thus, the many earphones and translation booths at the United Nations in New York today give eloquent testimony to the tragic episode at Babel. “Therefore is the name of it called Babel” (Gen 11:9). This tower project may have been named by Nimrod himself. Babel literally means “gate of God.” Thus, while mankind had rejected the true God, they nevertheless attempted to assuage their uneasy consciences by acknowledging some vague and impersonal “grand architect of the universe.” But it didn’t work! God changed the meaning of the word Babel to mean “confusion.”