But while Noah, conformably to the earlier practice, erected an altar to Jehovah, offered typical offerings, and otherwise complied with the ritual, professed the doctrines, and exercised the faith of the revealed system of religion, and was a preacher of righteousness; his early descendants, like those of Adam, were soon separated into opposite parties of true and false worshippers.
The false or idolatrous party, originally characterized as the seed of the serpent, the followers and servants of Satan, having, under Nimrod—a name signifying rebel—united in their antagonist scheme, commenced the erection of the tower of Babel—otherwise Bel, Belus, or Baal—in Babylon.
From a comparison of the terms employed with reference to this structure, and the object and nature of the idolatry to which it was devoted; its history and that of the structures and idolatry of other countries which were copied from the model here furnished; the descriptions in the Scriptures of that idolatry, both as practised by the heathen and by the Israelites, and the references to it by Herodotus, Thucydides, and other secular historians, the following summary statement in the present and two succeeding chapters is believed to be well founded.
This tower or temple was originally destined, as it was afterwards devoted, to the worship of the great Adversary, who palmed himself upon his followers as god of this world, god of providence, bestower of benefits and blessings; the good principle or intelligence of the Babylonians, Persians, and other heathen nations, by whom he was regarded as a creature intermediate between the supreme, self-existent, invisible Being, and the human race, and in that character as creator and ruler of the world; having his residence in the sun as his tabernacle and shekina, and manifesting himself locally and at pleasure to his votaries in fire, as his element, and as the medium of their worship, sacrifices, incense, &c., and in light, and in the effects of the solar heat upon vegetation, and otherwise as causing the chief blessings and comforts of life. These visible objects and benefits appealed directly to the senses and the unrestrained passions of his followers, who, being at enmity with the righteous party, and irreconcilably opposed to the doctrines, duties, and restraints of their religion; and yet, as well from social considerations as from their natures as dependent creatures, requiring a substitute, a rival antagonist system, and a head and leader consistent with it, may well be supposed to have entered into this system with a zeal, a pertinacity and desperateness, not exceeded by their successors in Babylon or elsewhere, nor even by that of the apostate Jews, who, in direct opposition to the doctrines and worship of Jehovah, established in his temple this idol system, with its emblems and rites, and the public and formal worship of its god in the sun, most boldly and impiously turning their faces to the East, and their backs to the visible Shekina in the holy place.
The system of corruption, delusion, and bondage, by which the great Adversary commenced his second experiment of lordship over his party, and of renewed and perpetual hostility towards the righteous, and treason, rebellion, impiety, and insult towards Jehovah their Elohe, required not only to be such as would gratify their depraved hearts and grovelling passions, so as to insure success to his craft and subtlety, but to be contrived, adopted, and put in practice so as to unite, combine, and govern them, as soon as possible after the repeopling of the earth commenced.
That it was in fact contrived, adopted, and practised prior to the dispersion, is proved by the resumption and practice of it by the dispersed tribes and nations both in the Eastern and Western hemispheres: and that the nature, object, doctrines, rites, bearings, and ends of it, were originally well understood, and matter of common intelligence and notoriety, is proved by the close resemblance of the system, as established in other quarters of the world, to the model metropolitan establishment in Babylon.
This original tower or temple—which there is no reasonable ground to doubt continued near two thousand years, till Xerxes pillaged and destroyed it, together with the structures around it which had been added by Nebuchadnezzar—was six hundred feet square at the base, and six hundred feet in height, its cubic contents far exceeding those of the largest of the pyramids. It was devoted to the worship of the god of their idolatry, the intelligence to whom they ascribed the works of creation and providence, under the names Bel, Baal, Beelzebub, and other designations of Satan; and also to astronomical observations, which appear to have led to the appropriation, subsequently, of the moon to Astarte, consort of Baal and Queen of heaven, the prototype—not in respect to her moral character, which was wholly opposite, but to her mediating office—of the deified Mary of the Papists; and of the planets and stars, to subordinate auxiliary mediating demons of different species.
The projectors and architects of this great paragon and wonder of the world were not a horde of ignorant, wandering nomades. They had knowledge and arts adequate to an undertaking, whether considered merely as a physical undertaking, or in connection with the stupendous and enduring system of imposture, impiety, and misery it was devoted to, which has not been equalled since: and which may well be conceived of as sufficient to occasion the local and special interposition of the Messenger Jehovah to confound their language and scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth. Their astronomy, and probably their geometry and other abstruse branches of knowledge, were, at least in respect to their leading principles, not inferior to those of the present day. Prideaux, speaking of this tower, which he holds to be the same with that destroyed Xerxes, observes, that “when Alexander took Babylon, Callisthenes the philosopher, who accompanied him thither, found they had astronomical observations for nineteen hundred and three years backward from that time, which carrieth the account as high as the one hundred and fifteenth year after the flood, which was within fifteen years after the Tower of Babel was built. For the confusion of tongues, which followed immediately after the building of that tower, happened in the year wherein Peleg was born, which was an hundred and one years after the flood, and fourteen years after that, those observations began. This account Callisthenes sent from Babylon into Greece, to his master Aristotle,” &c. (Book II., part 1.)