And they said, Come, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.
All Commentaries on Genesis 11:4 Go To Genesis 11
John Chrysostom
AD 407
This in fact is the way the Lord is accustomed to behave. This is what he did in the beginning in the case of the [first] woman as well. She had abused the status conferred on her, and for that reason he subjected her to her husband. Again, too, in the case of Adam, since he drew no advantage from the great ease he enjoyed and from life in the garden but rather rendered himself liable to punishment through the fall, God drove him out of the garden and inflicted on him everlasting punishment in the words “thorns and thistles let the earth yield.” So when the people in the present case, who had been dignified with similarity of language, used the privilege given them for evil purposes, he put a stop to the impulse of their wickedness through creating differences in language. “Let us confuse their speech,” he says, “so that they will be unable to understand one another’s language.” His purpose was that, just as similarity of language achieved their living together, so difference in language might cause dispersal among them.
