Once upon a time.
All the people of the earth spoke one language; and as they travelled westward, they found a broad valley in the land of Babylonia, and made their home there. Then they said one to another, "Come, let us make bricks and thoroughly bake them." So they had
bricks for stone and asphalt for mortar. And they said, "Come, let us build us a city, and a tower whose top will touch the heavens, and thus make a landmark, that we may not be scattered over all the earth."
Only the beginning.
But when God came down to see the city and the tower men had built, he said, "See, they are one people and all have one language. This is but the beginning, and now nothing which they
plan to do will seem too difficult for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language, that they may not understand one another." So God scattered them from there over all the earth; and they stopped building the city.
Confusion reigns.
Therefore they named it Babel, which means confusion, for there God confused the language of all the people on the earth and scattered them over the whole world.
What we can learn.
Scholars have pointed out that the desire to remain together in one place was in direct conflict with the divine purpose and doomed to failure. As it is expressed to Noah and his sons after the flood: "Be fertile and increase and fill up the earth" -Genesis 9:7
