The traditional Jewish explanation for G-d’s wrath against the Tower of Babel is that they were attempting a revolt against G-d. Not that G-d was worried that the revolt itself could have done him any harm, but that it’s a bad idea for people to get into their heads at all.
What’s the traditional Jewish explaination for the use of the term “one of us” by G-d in Gen. 3.22?
Smith’s argument was that “Asherah poles” weren’t for worship of the goddess Asherah; that the poles were cultic symbols dedicated to gods used to mark the sites of altars, but not specifically to the goddess Asherah. So, an altar of Baal would have an asherah next to it, an altar of Yahweh would have an asherah next to it, an altar of Astarte would have an asherah next to it and so on, and that they were used for a channel for divination and divine healing, if that makes any sense. He agrees with a bunch of other people that the figurines represent Astarte, and not Asherah.
His basic argument is that Asherah might have been worshiped early on in Canaan/Israel as the wife of El, but when El got combined with Yahweh, the worship of Asherah died out.
That’s a hard proposition to support, given the prevalence of Asherah figurines, and it’s out of step with the majority. It smacks of a tendentious attempt to preserve the myth of ancient Jewish montheism in the face of a great deal of evidence for popular polytheism up until the exile.
Astarte and Asherah were probably variations on the same goddess, by the way.
He’s not denying there was popular polytheism pre-exile. He’s just claiming that Asherah wasn’t one of the gods worshiped.
He knew that it would only become a target for terrorists.
According to the rabbis, it wasn’t the actual tower that was bad, it was the intent.
There are different midrashim on the topic- I think one explanation is that they intended to go to war against the heavens. Another is (IIRC) that they wanted to deny God’s providence, so they told themselves that Noah and the whole flood business was just a natural phenomenon. Like, maybe, there was a skyquake, and the heavenly reservoir that holds the rain cracked and let it all out at once, so if we build a support column for the sky, we won’t have anything to worry about.
In either interpretation, the tower is taken as a big middle finger to God. “Neener neener neener, we don’t need you. Smite us if you can!”
Interestingly, the midrash also has something positive to say about them. It says the reason the Flood generation was drowned, but the Tower generation was only scattered, was that the pre-flood people went around robbing and killing and generally being sociopathic. The Tower people had a bad attitude, but they got along with each other. They were respectful and unified and law-abiding. So they only got scattered.
It does not really point to the differing languages so much, actually not at all, but as miscommunication between people of similar language. This goes on today, as miscomminication of intentions is very very common.