The Name Babel

Genesis says the city was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language. The verb is balal, בלל, to mix, to confuse. Babel is בבל. The sounds are close on purpose. The narrator wants the reader to hear the judgment in the name. Genesis 11:9

In Akkadian, the great city's name is Bab-ilu, gate of god. That is the name the city wore for itself, and it is a proud one. A gate of god, with a tower whose top is in the heavens, is exactly the project the chapter describes. The Hebrew story does not miss the pride. It answers it. You called it the gate of god. We heard a confusion.

This is a common move in this book. A name is given, and then a reason that fits the story being told. The reason is the point. It is not a modern etymology paper, and it does not have to lose to the Akkadian name to be true. A city can bear a proud name and be remembered by a pun that tells the truth about it.

Later prophets pick up the name. Babel becomes Babylon, the empire that will take Judah. The tower chapter is not a hidden prediction of Nebuchadnezzar. It is the first time a city in Shinar tries to make a name that replaces God's, and the last empires in the book keep doing a version of the same thing. Revelation's Babylon is a city of that kind, not a travel guide back to one ziggurat. Revelation 18:2

Archaeology has uncovered great brick structures in southern Mesopotamia, and bitumen was used as mortar, which is a detail the chapter gets right about the method. Genesis 11:3 Getting the method right is not the same as identifying one ruin as the tower and printing a year on it. The timeline does not. It says: in the days of Peleg, about year 1757 and after, an estimate for the generation, counted from the genealogies, not from a foundation deposit.