The Tower of Babel

The Tower of Babel. 
"Man's Plan verses God's Command"

The Biblical account of how God confused the language of mankind and scattered them all over the earth is indeed an interesting and thought provoking peek into the history of mankind that we would do well to understand and learn from. 

Let's start by going through the world changing event as it is recorded in Genesis 11: 1 - 9:

1. Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 
2. As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. 
3. They said to each other, “Come, let's make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They usedbrick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.” 
5. But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. 
6. The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 
7. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.” 
8. So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 
9. That is why it was called Babel -because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

In order to understand how the people attempted to build the tower in disobedience to God's will for mankind we also need to read Genesis 1:28, which goes thus:

God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

Let's note that God's will for mankind was that we "fill the earth and subdue it" and not to prevent being "scattered over the face of the whole earth."