“Come, let us descend, and we will muddle their language there, so that one will not understand the language of his counterpart” (Genesis 11:7). “Come, let us descend” – this is one of the instances that they altered for King Ptolemy28When translating the Torah for him. See Megilla 9b. – [they wrote:] “Come, I shall descend and I shall muddle.” “And muddle [navla] their language there” – Rabbi Abba bar Kahana said: From their language, I will make them into carcasses [nevela].
One of them would say to another: ‘Give me an axe,’ and he would give him a shovel. He would then strike him and split his skull. That is what is written: From their language, I will make them into carcasses [nevela]. “The Lord dispersed them from there upon the face of the entire earth, and they ceased to build the city” (Genesis 11:8).
“The Lord dispersed [vayafetz] them from there” – Rabbi Yehuda and Rabbi Neḥemya, Rabbi Yehuda said: The residents of Tyre went to Sidon, and the residents of Sidon to Tyre.29The dispersion was that each person went to a place different from his original home. Each land retained its borders. Rabbi Neḥemya said: Each and every person retained his land of his original residence and returned there. What, then, is meant by “He dispersed”?
It is that each [of the residents] of the lands gathered at the mountaintops,30They emerged from the valley and ascended to the surrounding highlands, but they did not leave their country. and each one [mountaintop] would absorb the residents of its place. The Rabbis say: Vayafetz is nothing other than inundated [vayatzef] – He inundated them with the sea and drowned thirty families of them. Rabbi Levi said: There is no misfortune that befalls a person that others do not benefit from it.
Those thirty families, from where were they replaced? It was from Abraham: sixteen from Ketura, twelve from Ishmael, and the other two: “The Lord said to her: Two peoples are in your womb” (Genesis 25:23).