בנסעם מקדם, they were leading the lives of nomads, much like shepherds who move to wherever there was good grazing land for their flocks.

הבה נלבנה לבנים, now they wanted to build permanent housing for themselves and pens for the flocks and herds. This was a common consensus, as we know from the Torah describing their speaking to each other as ויאמרו איש אלך רעהו, “they said each to his colleague.”

ויאמרו הבה נבנה לנו עיר, this was at the advice of their leaders who wanted to enthrone Nimrod as king over the entire human race,

Thus we will make for ourselves a name. This “name” was the idol that was to be placed in the tower. They hoped that on account of the grandeur of the tower and the city this idol would come to be recognized universally as the supreme deity. In this way the king of the city would achieve dominion over the entire world.

וירד ה' לראות, The Torah uses the expression “G’d descended to see, etc.,” only when the sins committed by the people concerned were not yet ripe for severe punishment but would become so if left unchecked. Retribution which results from G’d “descending,” must be viewed as a kind of preventive medicine, designed to avoid the need for more drastic action at a later stage. One well known example of G’d’s preventive retribution is the בן סורר ומורה, a thirteen year old who stole a little meat and wine from his parents, and whose punishment is execution if the parents brought him to court as an unmanageable teenager (Deut. 21,18, see Rashi, and Sanhedrin 72 on this). In the case of Sodom, where G’d is also reported as “descending,” (Genesis 18,21) this also occurred at a time when their sin had not yet been greater than that of other surrounding nations, so that only these cities had to be singled out for punishment at that time. What distinguished the Sodomites was only the cruelty with which they committed the same kind of sins as those committed by other nations. This would eventually have led to such a corrupt world that the need for G’d to intervene on a global rather than a local basis, would have become unavoidable. Ezekiel 16,49 also describes the sin of the Sodomites in such terms when he wrote הנה זה היה עון סדום אחותך...ויד עני ואביון לא החזיקה”This was the sin of Sodom your sister…..but the hand of the poor and the needy she did not support.” Similarly, the punishment of the Israelites when they were exiled was brought forward out of concern that something worse might become their fate if G’d did not intervene at that time and exile them so that He would not eventually have to punish them even more harshly. (Deut 32,20) “I can see what would be their ultimate end.”

הן עם אחד, the only way I can stop them from carrying out their unanimously approved plan is to sow the seeds of discord between them. The instrument of bringing this about is to confuse their language. Basically, people’s disagreements are either religious, (philosophical) in nature, or they result from misunderstanding what they mean when they speak. These people had been of one mind in matters of religion, seeing that they had all agreed with the mistaken idolatrous philosophy shared by mankind at that time. In spite of such apparently good reasons for disagreeing with one another, they did not misunderstand each other.

וזה החלו לעשות, and yet they all agree to begin this project.

ועתה לא יבצר מהם, in view of these circumstances, if left alone, they would complete what they have set out to do, so that this form of idolatry they have agreed on would henceforth be something embraced by all of mankind. Not a single one of them would turn to the Creator of the universe and realise that He, and He alone, is the Creator of the entire universe. On the other hand, the opposite will occur if discord will break out among them regarding the supremacy of any of the deities versus the competing ones. In such a scenario, every nation would believe that there is one deity that is superior to all the various national deities, whose concern is only with the particular nation worshipping that deity. All the minor deities would have to subordinate themselves to the power of that super-deity. The prophet Maleachi 1,11 expresses this in the following words: ”for from where the sun rises to where it sets, My name is honoured among the nations;” כי ממזרח שמש ועד מבואו גדול שמי בגוים.

ויולד בנים ובנות, the Torah does not mention even once the word וימות, “he died,” something that appears with the report of each of the generations preceding the deluge. The reason why the Torah mentioned the death of those generations was because each of them died before the main subject of the entire chapter had been reached, i.e. the destruction of life on earth by the deluge. The people in the generations from Noach onward are considered as having been forerunners fo a positive development, as opposed to their predecessors who simply died before everybody else died also. In our chapter the thrust of the story is to show that eventually a towering personality such as Avraham emerged on earth, so that those who preceded him may be viewed as paving the way for Avraham’s eventual emergence on the stage of history. Avraham’s greatness is enhanced by the relatively insignificant lives of his predecessors.

ללכת ארצה כנען, this land is prepared for enabling its residents to acquire all intellectual advantages, and, as far as G’d is concerned, it is the most preferred of all the countries on earth. We have this on the authority of the Torah itself which says of that land (Deuteronomy 11,12) ארץ אשר ה' אלוקיך דורש אותה תמיד עיני ה' אלוקיך בה מרשית השנה ועד אחרית שנה, “and concerning which G’d enquires constantly, His eyes being trained on it from the beginning of the year until the year’s end.” The climate of the land of Canaan had not been negatively affected by the rains of the deluge, as had the climate of all other parts of the globe. We have this on the authority of Ezekiel 22,24 ארץ לא גשמה ביום זעם, “a land which did not experience rain on the day of the fury.” This may well be the reason why the sages (Baba Batra 58) said that the climate of the land of Israel makes people smarter.

וימת תרח בחרן, he had not made an effort to realise his intention of moving all the way to the land of Canaan as he had set out to do in verse 31. He never even visited his son Avraham in the land of Canaan, never observing with his own eyes what a great name Avraham had made for himself and G’d there. Lot, on the other hand, did the opposite for a while at least, having joined Avraham, kept him company and this is why both he and his offspring benefited from this both immediately, such as when Lot became rich in Egypt, as well as much later when Israel was not allowed to conquer the lands belonging to Lot’s descendants, i.e. Ammon and Moav. (compare Nachmanides on Pinchas 25,18)