The Tower of Babel

The Tower of Babel
Genesis 11:1-9

In our story of Noah's Ark, we learned how God made a covenant. He said never again would waters become a flood to destroy the earth. For a sign, he made a rainbow in the clouds, and God promised to look upon it and remember the covenant between God and every living creature. And Noah's sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth went out and had many sons, and the number of the people on earth grew very large.

At that time, everyone spoke the same language. And as the people traveled from the east, they found a plain in a place called Shinar. A plain is a large flat area, and so all the people lived there. They decided to make some bricks out of stone, and use some slimy stuff to stick them together, and they made a decision to build a city and a tower whose top would reach into heaven, and they wanted to make themselves very strong and well known so that they would not be scattered throughout the earth.

But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men on the earth had built. And the LORD said "The people are all together, and they have only one language, and now they will decide to do many things because they have imagined in their hearts that they can do whatever they want. Let us go down and make them have more than one language, so they will not understand what each one is saying to another."

So the LORD scattered them from all being in the same place, and they stopped building the city. And so the name of it is called Babel; because the LORD there stopped the people from having the same language, and scattered them on the face of the earth.

Isn't it a wonderful thing that the Lord is in control? Isn't it a wonderful thing to know that everything is in His hands?

Memory Verse: "So the LORD scattered them from all being in the same place, and they stopped building the city." Genesis 11:8

Questions:
1. Where did all the people decide to live?
2. Why did they want to build a city and a tower?
3. Why were they all together?
4. What did the LORD do?
5. Why did the LORD stop them from having the same language?

Answers:
1. In a plain at a place called Shinar
2. So that they would be very strong and no one would be able to scatter them.
3. Because they all spoke the same language and all lived together in one place
4. He mixed up their language so they wouldn't understand each other and made them live in different places.
5. Because they believed that they were so strong they could do whatever they wanted to, and the LORD wanted them to know that He is in control.

Vicki C. Gross/Mar'03

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