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.
Read Chapter 11
Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
It is conceivable that here there may have been an allusion to the Trinity, if we suppose that the Father said to the Son and the Holy Spirit, “Come, let us descend and confound their tongue.” The supposition is sound. But if so, we must rule out the possibility that angels were meant. And surely it is more proper for the angels to come to God unbidden, moved by grace, that is, by the thoughts that make them devoutly submissive to unchanging truth, as to the eternal law that rules their heavenly court. The angels are not their own criterion of truth, but, depending on creative truth, they move unbidden toward it as toward a fountain of life from which they must imbibe what they do not have of themselves. And their motion is without change, since they keep coming, never to depart.
They foolishly began to build a tower that touched the stars and thought they might be able to climb the skies with it. But God, seeing that their work proceeded because they spoke the same language, intervened and caused them to speak different languages. Then he scattered them by isolating them in the islands of the earth, so that nations speaking different tongues arose. –.
Famous before; Hebrew lest; as if they intended to prevent that event. (Haydock)
Their motive appears to have been pride, which raised the indignation of God. Nemrod, the chief instigator, might have designed the tower for a retreat, whence he might sally out and maintain his tyranny. (Menochius)
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 langua...
