Genesis 11:8

The resultant confusion led to a scattering of the people over the "whole earth" (cf. Genesis 11:9). God did not allow human rebellion to reach the level that it did before the Flood. God forced people to do what they refused to do voluntarily, namely, scatter over the face of the earth.

Some interpreters take the confusion of languages to have been a local phenomenon only. One writer believed lightning struck the tower of Babel and the confusion of speech that followed resulted from a scrambling of the electrical circuits in the brains of those struck. [Note: James E. Strickling, "The Tower of Babel and the Confusion of Tongues," Kronos (Fall 1982), pp. 53-62.] This is an interesting idea but impossible to prove. Most interpreters, however, regard this event as the source of the major language groups in the world today.