A long, long time ago, after the great flood, all the people in the world were one big family. And do you know something special? Everyone spoke the very same language. Every person could understand every other person perfectly. Wasn't that wonderful?
The people travelled together until they came to a wide, flat land, and there they decided to build a city and make their home.
The people learned how to make bricks out of clay and bake them hard in the fire. They were very clever, and they were very proud of how clever they were.
Soon they had a big idea. "Let us build a city," they said, "and a tower so tall that its top will reach all the way up to the sky! Then we will be famous, and everyone will say how great we are!"
Now, building things is not bad. But their hearts were full of pride. They did not want to build the tower to thank God or to praise Him. They wanted to make themselves great, as if they did not need God at all. They thought that if they built high enough, they could even climb up to heaven by themselves.
So they began to build. Up and up went the tower, brick by brick by brick. Higher and higher it climbed, until it seemed to scrape the clouds. The people worked and worked, more and more proud of themselves with every passing day.
But God looked down at the great tower, and He saw the pride in the people's hearts. He knew that all this pride would only lead them away from Him and bring them sadness. So God decided to do something gentle and wise to stop them.
Suddenly, something very strange and surprising happened.
The people could no longer understand one another! When one worker asked his friend for more bricks, his friend heard nothing but funny, jumbled sounds. "What did you say?" they each wondered. God had given them many different languages, all at once.
Oh, what a muddle it was! No one could understand anyone else. They could not work together anymore, and so they had to stop building the tall, tall tower. And the people who spoke the same new languages gathered together and went off to live in different parts of the whole wide world. That is why, even today, people in different lands speak so many different languages.
The place was called Babel, which means "mixed up," because that is where God mixed up the languages of the world.
The story of the Tall Tower teaches us something important. The people were clever and strong — but they had become proud, and they thought they did not need God. And pride always leads us away from God and away from each other.
But here is a beautiful secret. Long, long afterward, God made everything right again. On a wonderful day called Pentecost, God sent His Holy Spirit upon the apostles, and they were suddenly able to speak in every language, so that people from every land could hear about Jesus and be one family again — not through a proud tower, but through the love of God.
For God does not want us to lift ourselves up. He wants us to lift up our hearts to Him — and He will raise us higher than any tower could ever reach.
The story of the Tower of Babel is told in the Bible, in the Book of Genesis, chapter 11. At Pentecost (Acts 2), God gave the apostles every language, healing what happened at Babel.