Editing Tower of Babel (section)

=== Midrash ===
[[Rabbinic literature]] offers many different accounts of other causes for building the Tower of Babel, and of the intentions of its builders. According to one midrash the builders of the Tower, called "the generation of secession" in the Jewish sources, said: "God has no right to choose the upper world for Himself, and to leave the lower world to us; therefore we will build us a tower, with an idol on the top holding a sword, so that it may appear as if it intended to war with God" ([[Genesis Rabbah|Gen. R.]] [https://archive.org/stream/RabbaGenesis/midrashrabbahgen027557mbp#page/n353/mode/2up xxxviii. 7]; Tan., ed. Buber, Noah, xxvii. et seq.).

The building of the Tower was meant to bid defiance not only to God, but also to Abraham, who exhorted the builders to reverence. The passage mentions that the builders spoke sharp words against God, saying that once every 1,656 years, heaven tottered so that the water poured down upon the earth, therefore they would support it by columns that there might not be another deluge (Gen. R. l.c.; Tan. l.c.; similarly Josephus, "Ant." i. 4, § 2).

Some among that generation even wanted to war against God in heaven (Talmud Sanhedrin 109a). They were encouraged in this undertaking by the notion that arrows that they shot into the sky fell back dripping with blood, so that the people really believed that they could wage war against the inhabitants of the heavens ([[Sefer haYashar (midrash)|Sefer ha-Yashar]], Chapter 9:12–36). According to Josephus and Midrash Pirke R. El. xxiv., it was mainly Nimrod who persuaded his contemporaries to build the Tower, while other rabbinical sources assert, on the contrary, that Nimrod separated from the builders.<ref name="JE" />

According to another midrashic account, one third of the Tower builders were punished by being transformed into semi-demonic creatures and banished into three parallel dimensions, inhabited now by their descendants.<ref>{{cite book|url=http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/lginzberg/bl-lginzberg-legends-1-4l.htm |title=Legends of the Jews, Volume 1 |first=Louis |last=Ginzberg |author-link=Louis Ginzberg|location=New York |date=1909  |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151001053501/http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/lginzberg/bl-lginzberg-legends-1-4l.htm|archive-date=1 October 2015}}</ref>