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[115]
Now the multitude were very ready to follow the determination of
Nimrod, and to esteem it a piece of cowardice to submit to God; and they
built a tower, neither sparing any pains, nor being in any degree negligent
about the work: and, by reason of the multitude of hands employed in it,
it grew very high, sooner than any one could expect; but the thickness
of it was so great, and it was so strongly built, that thereby its great
height seemed, upon the view, to be less than it really was. It was built
of burnt brick, cemented together with mortar, made of bitumen, that it
might not be liable to admit water. When God saw that they acted so madly,
he did not resolve to destroy them utterly, since they were not grown wiser
by the destruction of the former sinners; but he caused a tumult among
them, by producing in them divers languages, and causing that, through
the multitude of those languages, they should not be able to understand
one another. The place wherein they built the tower is now called Babylon,
because of the confusion of that language which they readily understood
before; for the Hebrews mean by the word Babel, confusion. The Sibyl
also makes mention of this tower, and of the confusion of the language,
when she says thus: "When all men were of one language, some of them
built a high tower, as if they would thereby ascend up to heaven, but the
gods sent storms of wind and overthrew the tower, and gave every one his
peculiar language; and for this reason it was that the city was called
Babylon." But as to the plan of Shinar, in the country of Babylonia,
Hestiaeus mentions it, when he says thus: "Such of the priests as
were saved, took the sacred vessels of Jupiter Enyalius, and came to Shinar
of Babylonia."
1
1 AFTER WHAT MANNER THE POSTERITY OF NOAH SENT OUT COLONIES, AND INHABITED THE WHOLE EARTH.
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