That is why it is called Babel - because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.
Genesis 11:9
I find the story of the Tower of Babel fascinating because of my love for languages - etymology and philology - I took History of the English Language as an upper level elective in college, just for fun. Being a bit of a rebel at a conservative Christian school, I wrote my culminating research paper on the history, usage and etymology of curse words. The paper was called "Dirty Word, Dirty Word, Cursing Fit" because that is what one of my friends in high school used to say in place of obscenity. George Carlin would have been proud. But I digress . . .
God's reasons for muddling the languages are odd - but what I would give to see that! What did that first language sound like? Was this Indo-European root language one of the ones created at the Tower?
Babel of course lends it's name to Babel Fish, the online language translator, and even more famously to Babylon. Yes, Babel became Babylon, the evil empire - still relevant today, as ancient Babylon is very near modern Baghdad in Iraq.
Oh, and here they come again - more begats! But this time we are begatting someone who is very important to the rest of the book of Genesis, and indeed to the rest of the bible - because it is at the end of this long list of begats that we are introduced to Abraham. Yes, Abraham. As in Father Abraham (he of many sons . . . if you ever went to Sunday School or VBS at an evangelical church then you probably know exactly what I'm talking about). Only, this descendant of Shem is, at the moment, still going by his bisyllabic "Abram".
Abram, his father Terah, and his brothers Nahor and Haran (father of Lot) call Ur of the Chaldeans home. (Not to be confused with Caledonia, which is part of Scotland). It seems that Terah too escaped the age limit restrictions of chapter 6, as he survived to 205 years old. He died in Haran, which I'm guess was named for his son at a later date, since that is where his family settled, and which I am also guessing is somewhere between Ur and Canaan, as it was to Canaan that the family (including Abram and his wife Sarai) were headed.
This chapter doesn't raise many questions for me, it's more just a straight history . . . so it is in Haran where we will pick up on the story of Abram in our next installment of As The World Turns . . . I mean, um, A Chapter A Day.
