Biblical Antiquities of Philo: The Biblical Antiquities of Philo: Chapter VII
CHAPTER VII.
VII. And it came to pass after these things, that the people of the land turned not from their evil thoughts: and they came together again unto their princes and said: The people shall not be overcome for ever: and now let us come together and build us a city and a tower which shall never be removed.
2. And when they had begun to build, God saw the city and the tower which the children of men
1 and unto some of them their end shall come by water, and other of them shall be dried up with thirst. 4. And before all of them will I choose my servant Abram, and I will bring him out from their land, and lead him into the land which mine eye hath looked upon from the beginning when all the dwellers upon earth sinned before my face, and I brought on them the water of the flood: and then I destroyed not that land, but preserved it. Therefore the fountains of my wrath did not break forth therein, neither did the water of my destruction come down upon it. For there will I make my servant Abram to dwell, and I will make my covenant with him, and bless his seed, and will be called his God for ever.
5. Howbeit when the people that dwelt in the land had begun to build the tower, God divided their speech, and changed their likeness. 2 And
95:1 VII. 3. I will liken them unto spittle (also XII. 4). The source is Isa. 40:15; but this clause is not in our present Hebrew text. It occurs, however, in the LXX; it is also in 4 Esdras 6:56, Apoc. Bar. 82:5, both of which books are believed to have been written in Hebrew. We need not, therefore, count its occurrence in Philo as implying dependence on the LXX. Compare the combinations of phrases from Isaiah in XXVI. 13.