They also said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower, whose top will reach to heaven; and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.”
Genesis 11:4
Man was instructed to name the animals. God Himself named man. The builders’ effort to self-name was an explicit attempt to be like God by displacing Him as the ordering principle of the cosmos.1 As the means of their unsanctioned ascent, the tower was an artificial totality whose top was man. The top reached into the heavens. It was intended to elevate man beyond the mortal plain into the divine realm. Of course, this was a fated endeavor. Mortal handiwork crumbles in the presence of true divinity: the-tower-of-babel-was-blown-down-by-the-winds-of-pentecost.
This is the same pattern as the Numenorean war on Valinor.↩︎