Genesis 11

As the generations our posterity of Noah began to expand and grow, the Lord commanded them to begin to set out to fill the as Noah and his sons were commanded to multiply and replenish the earth.  I believe the intent was for families to spread out in small family communities.  But power and might seemed to come only as the people gathered in much larger communities and cities.  This seems the case with wicked Nimrod and the people of Babel.

There are only a few scriptures in the Old Testament concerning the Tower of Babel. One I find significant was as the disobedient began to gather in the city of Babel that -

"..they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter.
4 And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth."  (Old Testament | Genesis 11:3 - 4)

With Nimrod, as I believe, being the fourth generation from Noah, obviously this people were more than familiar and feared another great flood.  Knowing that the people were destroyed with the flood because they were disobedient to God, this people, in great pride, thought to gain power higher than God, preserving themselves from a flood.  Even to the point of avoiding to take on the name of God, but suggesting that they could establish their own name over deity.  Sounds like great mockery to me.

Though there is little in Genesis, I would like to include the writings of Josephus -

1. Now the sons of Noah were three,— Shem, Japhet, and Ham, born one hundred years before the Deluge [the Flood]. These first of all [immediately following the Flood] descended from the mountains [where the ark landed] into the plains, and fixed their habitation there; and persuaded others who were greatly afraid of the lower grounds on account of the flood, and so were very loath to come down from the higher places, to venture to follow their examples. Now the plain in which they first dwelt was called Shinar. God also commanded them to send colonies abroad, for the thorough peopling of the earth, that they might not raise seditions among themselves, but might cultivate a great part of the earth, and enjoy its fruits after a plentiful manner. But they were so ill instructed that they did not obey God; for which reason they fell into calamities, and were made sensible, by experience, of what sin they had been guilty: for when they flourished with a numerous youth, God admonished them again to send out colonies; but they, imagining the prosperity they enjoyed was not derived from the favor of God, but supposing that their own power was the proper cause of the plentiful condition they were in, did not obey him. Nay, they added to this their disobedience to the Divine will, the suspicion that they were therefore ordered to send out separate colonies, that, being divided asunder, they might the more easily be Oppressed.

2. 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!

3. Now the multitude were very ready to follow the determination of Nimrod, and to esteem it a piece of cowardice to submit to God; and they built a tower, neither sparing any pains, nor being in any degree negligent about the work: and, by reason of the multitude of hands employed in it, it grew very high, sooner than any one could expect; but the thickness of it was so great, and it was so strongly built, that thereby its great height seemed, upon the view, to be less than it really was. It was built of burnt brick, cemented together with mortar, made of bitumen, that it might not be liable to admit water. When God saw that they acted so madly, he did not resolve to destroy them utterly, since they were not grown wiser by the destruction of the former sinners; but he caused a tumult among them, by producing in them divers [different, various] languages, and causing that, through the multitude of those languages, they should not be able to understand one another. The place wherein they built the tower is now called Babylon because of the confusion of that language which they readily understood before; for the Hebrews mean by the word Babel, confusion. The Sibyl also makes mention of this tower, and of the confusion of the language, when she says thus: “When all men were of one language, some of them built a high tower, as if they would thereby ascend up to heaven, but the gods sent storms of wind and overthrew the tower, and gave every one his peculiar language; and for this reason it was that the city was called Babylon” (Josephus, Flavius, Antiquities of the Jews, Book 1, chapter 4, verses 1– 3).

Thus the Lord scattered the people as per his original commandment by confounding the language.