Genesis 11:1 The whole earth had a common language and a common vocabulary. 2 When the people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. 3 Then they said to one another, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” (They had brick instead of stone and tar instead of mortar.) 4 Then they said, “Come, let’s build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens so that we may make a name for ourselves. Otherwise we will be scattered across the face of the entire earth.” 5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the people had started building. 6 And the Lord said, “If as one people all sharing a common language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be beyond them. 7 Come, let’s go down and confuse their language so they won’t be able to understand each other.” 8 So the Lord scattered them from there across the face of the entire earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why its name was called Babel – because there the Lord confused the language of the entire world, and from there the Lord scattered them across the face of the entire earth. NET
Genealogy fills chapter 10 and most of chapter 11 with this story being stuck in between. Of interest here is Genesis 10:8-12 that describes Nimrod, the son of Cush. Nimrod is a mighty warrior who establishes a large kingdom that includes Babylon and a number of other cities in the land of Shinar before pushing on to Assyria where he built Nineveh.
Genesis 10:8 Cush was the father of Nimrod, who began to be a mighty one on the earth. 9 He was a mighty hunter before the LORD; so it is said, “Like Nimrod, a mighty hunter before the LORD.” 10 His kingdom began in Babylon, Erech, Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. 11 From that land he went forth into Assyria, where he built Nineveh, Rehoboth-Ir, Calah, 12 and Resen, which is between Nineveh and the great city of Calah. BSB
Nimrod is the first person we see in Scripture who is building an empire and thereby putting other people in subjugation to himself. While we might read “before the Lord” as implying that he was a devout servant of God, many commentators have noted that we should understand this text to mean that Nimrod did his evil deeds right in front of God.
Now it was Nimrod who excited them to such an affront and contempt of God. He was the grandson of Ham, the son of Noah, a bold man, and of great strength of hand. He persuaded them not to ascribe it to God, as if it was through his means they were happy, but to believe that it was their own courage which procured that happiness. He also gradually changed the government into tyranny, seeing no other way of turning men from the fear of God, but to bring them into a constant dependence on his power. He also said he would be revenged on God, if he should have a mind to drown the world again; for that he would build a tower too high for the waters to be able to reach and that he would avenge himself on God for destroying their forefathers! From: Antiquities of the Jews by Flavius Josephus, chapter 4. https://www.biblestudytools.com/history/flavius-josephus/antiquities-jews/book-1/chapter-4.html
Babel, which becomes Babylon, comes from the Hebrew word balai (Strongs 894) meaning confusion. Babylon is an actual place and is the location of God’s nemesis, i.e., the anti-God forces. This is spiritually significant as the world system in Revelation that is opposed to God is called Babylon. In St. Augustine’s City of God, there are two cities – Jerusalem and Babylon with one community trying to do what God wants while the other one does not. Geographically speaking, Babylon is north of Israel with Egypt to the south of Israel.
Here the people are migrating because they have been told by God to fill the earth. The thought of the early church and many rabbis is that these people have no intention of doing what they have been commanded to do. In a show of arrogance (not unlike the serpent in Genesis 3), they decide to build a tower so that they can control things instead of God. And this is just the start. While God disapproves of what they are doing (judgment), He takes a different approach. Instead of drowning them, God engages the problem and thwarts it by confusing the language and scattering them. Given the direction these people were headed (and the likely consequences), this action by God may have been an act of mercy rather than judgment. We are not all that different today – imagine where we might find ourselves had God not engaged Himself into our lives and moved us into a different direction than the one in which we were previously headed! The long game here is redemption through Christ and that is going to start at Genesis 11:26.