Genesis 11:7

Hebrew Bible

5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the people had started building. 6 And the Lord said, “If as one people all sharing a common language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be beyond them. 7 Come, let’s go down and confuse their language so they won’t be able to understand each other. 8 So the Lord scattered them from there across the face of the entire earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why its name was called Babel—because there the Lord confused the language of the entire world, and from there the Lord scattered them across the face of the entire earth.

Pseudo Jonathan Genesis 11:9

Targum

And the Lord was revealed to punish them for the work of the city and the tower which the sons of men builded. And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and the language of all of them one: and this they have thought to do: and now they will not be restrained from doing whatever they imagine. And the Lord said to the seventy angels which stand before Him, Come, we will descend and will there commingle their language, that a man shall not understand the speech of his neighbour. And the Word of the Lord was revealed against the city, and with Him seventy angels, having reference to seventy nations, each having its own language, and thence the writing of its own hand: and He dispersed them from thence upon the face of all the earth into seventy languages. And one knew not what his neighbour would say: but one slew the other; and they ceased from building the city.

 Notes and References

"... When the LORD descended to the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-19), he took with him the seventy angels who perpetually stood before him. And at the Tower, he divided humankind into seventy languages and nations, one for each of the seventy angels and then dispersed humankind over the face of the earth, having appointed one of the seventy angels as their guardian. The guardianship of Israel, however, he kept as his own responsibility. The last detail either takes place immediately at Babel or later at Sinai. This legend, which we will term the Angelic Patron Legend, appears in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan at Genesis 11:7-8 and at Deuteronomy 32:8-9, in the Hebrew Testament of Naphtali 8:4-10:2, and in Pirqe de Rabbi Eliezer 24, none of which can claim to be earlier than medieval times. Nonetheless, it is plausible to suppose that the legend itself is much earlier. In fact, a case can be made that it was already presumed by the author of Jubilees. Two different passages suggest this. First, in its retelling of the Tower of Babel story (Jubilees 10:22-23), God took the angels with him when he descended to see the Tower, but no mention is made of the number of angels, nor of the seventy languages ..."

Hannah, Darrell, D. Guardian Angels and Angelic National Patrons in Second Temple Judaism and Early Christianity (pp. 413-435) De Gruyter, 2007

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