that the ambitions of the tower builders were not directed against Yahweh. Arie van der Kooij argues that it is not about human sin nor punishment, but analogous to Mesopotamian etiological literature and addressing the present circumstances of the authors.

Genesis 11:8 reports that the construction of the tower was incomplete when its builders were dispersed around the world. Verse 5, however, has the visiting the tower "which the children of man had built" (perfect tense: