In the story of Babel that I was taught as a kid, the Babelites were not sure they were going to earn their way to heaven and were uncertain of God’s grace, so they figured they’d just climb. They built a tower that punctured the clouds, hoping to find where God lived.

I love this image. It’s so literal and graphic. It’s also wrong. Robert Alter, my favorite Biblical commentator, says no one was trying to build a tower to get to heaven. The text says that the tower’s top was “in the heavens,” but that “is a hyperbole found in Mesopotamian inscriptions for celebrating high towers” (Alter 39). The Babel built tower is the linguistic and literal equivalent of our “skyscrapers.”