laws of astronomy were known, the sun was supposed to be
trundled out into the heavens every day and the stars hung up in the
firmament every night by the right hand of the Almighty. Before the
laws of comets were known, they were thought to be missiles hurled by
an angry God at a wicked world. Before the real cause of lightning was
known, it was supposed to be the work of a good God in his wrath, or of
evil spirits in their malice. Before the laws of meteorology were known,
it was thought that rains were caused by the Almighty or his angels
opening "the windows of heaven" to let down upon the earth "the waters
that be above the firmament." Before the laws governing physical
health were known, diseases were supposed to result from the direct
interposition of the Almighty or of Satan. Before the laws governing
mental health were known, insanity was generally thought to be diabolic
possession. All these early conceptions were naturally embodied in the
sacred books of the world, and especially in our own.(412)

(412) Any one who wishes to realize the mediaeval view of the direct
personal attention of the Almighty to the universe, can perhaps do so
most easily by looking over the engravings in the well-known Nuremberg
Chronicle, representing him in the work of each of the six days, and
resting afterward.

So, in this case, to account for the diversity of tongues, the direct
intervention of the Divine Will was brought in. As this diversity was
felt to be an inconvenience, it was attributed to the will of a Divine
Being in anger. To explain this anger, it was held that it must have
been provoked by human sin.

Out of this conception explanatory myths and legends grew as thickly and
naturally as elms along water-courses; of these the earliest form known
to us is found in the Chaldean accounts, and nowhere more clearly than
in the legend of the Tower of Babel.

The inscriptions recently found among the ruins of Assyria have thrown
a bright light into this and other scriptural myths and legends: the
deciphering of the characters in these inscriptions by Grotefend, and
the reading of the texts by George Smith, Oppert, Sayce, and others,
have given us these traditions more nearly in their original form than
they appear in our own Scriptures.

The Hebrew story of Babel, like so many other legends in the sacred
books of the world, combined various elements. By a play upon words,
such as the history of myths and legends