The entire world was one language and one speech...
The Ohr Hachaim seeks to understand the Parsha of the Generation of Dispersion – the דור הפלגה. What were they trying to accomplish with their town and tower? If this is a kind of heresy, which is it? Why was the best punishment for them to be dispersed all over the world? The Torah writes וְעַתָּה לֹא יִּבָּצֵר מֵהֶם כֹל אֲשֶר יָּזְמוּ לַעֲשׂוֹת - Now, nothing will bar them from all they have planned to do. Is this possible? Can Hashem not do everything, including stopping them?
Additionally, Chazal tell us that Hashem wanted them to rebuild the world after the Mabul, what did they do wrong by building the town and tower?
The Ohr Hachaim suggests that the world was intended to be divided into thirds – one third would be settled by humans, one third would be desert land, and one third would be water. If we survey the world today, we will find that a hypothetical moving of all of the towns, cities, and villages in the world together, it would not even cover one-hundredth of the third allocated to humans. The reason it is still considered human-inhabited is because people travel between towns and cities, having conquered that area too. If all of those would be added to the move, it would indeed cover a third of the world.
These people of the Generation of the Dispersion wished to gather everyone together in one place. They all spoke one language and had a common goal. They wished to gather together and live in one great city as one. They built a large tower to signify to all that this was the place they should aim for. If anyone were to stray from the area, he could easily return through his view of the tall tower in his eye’s vision. This is the meaning of the possuk פֶן נָּפוּץ עַל פְנֵי כׇל הָּאָּרֶץ - lest we disperse over the face of all the earth."
The world’s inhabited area would have shrunk from a third to less than a hundredth of its designated area.
There was a deep reason for Hashem’s decision to divide the world into three, and if they would have been successful, the world’s purpose would not have been achieved.
