The builders of the Tower of Babel were not just confused. They were transformed. According to the Chronicles of Jerahmeel, a 12th-century Hebrew chronicle translated by SAFE0 Gaster in 1899, when God confounded their language, He also changed their form into that of monkeys. Brothers could not recognize each other. When builders ordered stones, workers brought water. When they asked for water, they received stubble.
The tower itself was a massive undertaking—seventy steps high, with the ascent from the east and the descent from the west. The builders' priorities were revealing: if a man fell from the tower, nobody cared. But if a single brick fell, they wept bitterly and cried, "When, oh when, will another be brought up?" Bricks mattered more than people.
Their ambitions went beyond architecture. The builders planned to "take axes and break open the firmament" so the waters above would drain below, preventing God from ever sending another flood. They intended to wage war against heaven itself and establish themselves as gods. God's response was decisive. He declared He would scatter them, destroy some by water and others by fire, and strike them with thirst—"but Abram, My servant, I shall select."
God revealed that the land He intended for Abraham had been spared even during the flood. He never sent the deluge upon it. Now He would bring Abraham there, make a covenant with him and his descendants forever, and be their God for eternity. Abram had cursed the builders in God's name, but they ignored him. So God descended with seventy thousand angels and shattered their single language into seventy tongues. The tower was abandoned. The people were scattered across the earth.