28 | JULY 18 • 2024 
J
N

T

here is an old 
saying that what 
makes God laugh 
is seeing our plans for the 
future. However, if Tanach is 
our guide, what makes God 
laugh is human 
delusions of 
grandeur. From 
the vantage 
point of heaven, 
the ultimate 
absurdity is 
when humans 
start thinking of 
themselves as godlike.
There are several pointed 
examples in the Torah. One 
whose full import has only 
recently become clear occurs 
in the story of the Tower of 
Babel. Men gather together 
in the plain of Shinar and 
decide to build a city and 
a tower “that will reach 
to heaven.” As it happens, 
we have archeological 
confirmation of this fact. 
Several Mesopotamian 
ziggurats, including the 
temple of Marduk in 

Babylon, have been found 
with inscriptions saying that 
they reach heaven. 
The idea was that tall 
buildings — man-made 
mountains — allowed 
humans to climb to the 
dwelling place of the gods 
and thus communicate with 
them. 
The Mesopotamian city 
states were among the first 
places of civilization, itself 
one of the turning points 
in the history of human life 
on earth. Before the birth 
of agriculture, the ancients 
lived in fear of nature: of 
predators, of other tribes 
and bands, and of the 
vicissitudes of heat and cold, 
drought and flood. Their fate 
depended on matters beyond 
their control.
Only with the spread of 
domesticated animals and 
agriculture did people gather 
in towns, then cities, then 
empires. A tipping point 
occurred in the balance 
of power between nature 

and culture. For the first 
time, humans were not 
confined to adapting to their 
environment. They could 
adapt their environment 
to suit them. At this point 
they — especially the rulers 
— began to see themselves 
as gods, demigods or people 
with the power to influence 
the gods.
The most conspicuous 
symbol of this was buildings 
on a monumental scale: 
the ziggurats of Babylon 
and other Mesopotamian 
cities, and the pyramids 
of Egypt. Built on the flat 
land of the Tigris-Euphrates 
valley and the Nile delta, 
they towered over their 
surroundings. The great 
pyramid of Giza, built even 
before the birth of Abraham, 
was so monumental that it 
remained the tallest man-
made structure on Earth for 
4,000 years.
The fact that these were 
artificial mountains built by 
human hands suggested to 

their builders that humans 
had acquired godlike powers. 
They had constructed a 
stairway to heaven. Hence 
the significance of the phrase 
in the Torah’s account of the 
tower, “And the Lord came 
down to see the city and the 
tower, which the children of 
man had built.” This is God 
laughing. On Earth, humans 
thought they had reached the 
sky, but to God the building 
was so infinitesimal, so 
microscopic that he had to 
come down even to see it. 
Only with the invention of 
flight do we now know how 
small the tallest building 
looks when you are looking 
down from a mere 30,000 
feet.
To end their hubris, God 
simply “confused their 
language.” They no longer 
understood one another. The 
entire project was turned 
into French farce. 
We can visualize the scene. 
A foreman calls for a brick 
and is handed a hammer. He 
tells a worker to go right, 
and he turns left. The project 
foundered in a welter of 
incomprehension. 
Men thought they could 
climb to heaven but, in the 
end, they could not even 
understand what the person 
next to them was saying. The 
unfinished tower became 
a symbol of the inevitable 
failure of vaunting ambition. 
The builders achieved what 
they sought but not in the 
way they intended. 
They wanted to “make a 
name for themselves” and 
they succeeded, but instead 
of becoming a byword for 
man’s ability to reach the 
sky, Babel became babble, an 
emblem of confusion. Hubris 
became nemesis.

What Makes God Laugh

Rabbi Lord 
Jonathan 
Sacks

SPIRIT
A WORD OF TORAH

