Was the Tower of Babel made in God's honor?

A:

Genesis 11:1-9 talks of a Tower of Babel being built right up to heaven by the people in their arrogance, and of God punishing the people by dispersing them and making them all speak in different languages.

This story was added to Genesis quite late in Jewish history, during the Babylonian Exile. The exiled Jews, who had never before seen a great cosmopolitan city like Babylon, were in awe of the great ziggurut, a pyramid-like tower, and at the same time surprised to meet people who spoke so many different languages. They associated the tower, which seemed to reach to heaven, and the many strange languages, and so developed the story of the Tower of Babel. The ziggurut was the Babylonian equivalent of a pagan temple.

Jewish answer:

No. According to Jewish tradition, it was to be the center of an idolatrous cult.