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Tower of Babel
God then spoke to the seventy angels nearest His throne, saying:
‘Let us go down again and confuse their language, making seventy
tongues of one!’
And so He did, for immediately the builders became
embroiled in misunderstandings. If a mason told a hod-carrier ‘Give
me mortar!’ the carrier would hand him a brick instead, with which
the mason would angrily kill the hod-carrier.
Many were the murders
done in the Tower; and on the ground also, because of this
confusion; until at last work slowed to a standstill.
As for the Tower: Earth swallowed a third part; fire from Heaven
destroyed another third; the remainder stands to this very day -
still so tall that from its summit the distant groves of Jericho
appear like a swarm of locusts; and the thin air robs men of their
wits. Yet the Tower seems less tall than it is, because an
exceedingly wide base.
Sepher Hayashur 22-31; B. Sanhedrin 109a; Pirqe Rabbi Eliezer, ch.
24. |
