Genesis 12:1-9
Two pericopes after Babel's tower falls, Yahweh speaks one man's name into a world that had just tried to name itself. The same noun (shem) recurs in deliberate inversion: humans cannot make a name for themselves, but Yahweh can give one. Gen 12:1–9 is the canonical answer to Babel, and the answer is one called man — walking, building altars, calling on Yahweh's name — whose seed will carry blessing back to all the clans of the ground.
Genesis 11:10-32
The Babel-builders said na'aseh-lanu shem — let us make for ourselves a name. Eight verses later the text answers them with a different shem entirely: eleh toledot Shem — these are the generations of Shem. The line through which the name-promise will travel is literally called Name. Ten generations descend from that line, then narrow into the toledot of Terah and stop in Ur Kasdim with a barren wife, an idol-serving father, and a brother dead in the family's birth-land. Out of those three impossibilities YHWH calls one man into a moledet he must leave for a patris he must seek.
Genesis 11:1-9
Gen 11:1-9 is nine verses; the canonical surface they cover runs from Cain's city (Gen 4:17) to the New Jerusalem (Rev 21:2). The Babel-builders try to make a name (na'aseh-lanu shem) and fail; the very next chapter, YHWH grants Abram a name (Gen 12:2). The descent verb (yarad / katabaino) that judges Babel becomes the descent verb that brings the New Jerusalem down from God. The name the builders could not seize is the name God grants to Christ (Phil 2:9), and the city they could not raise is the city that descends.
Genesis 10:1-32
Genesis 10 is the divine census taken before the rescue operation begins. The Table lists exactly 70 nations (14 Japheth + 30 Ham + 26 Shem) — the same 70 Deuteronomy 32:8 places under angelic stewardship (DSS bene Elohim), the same four-noun vocabulary (mishpachah + lashon + eretz + goy) Revelation 5:9 and 7:9 use for the eschatological gathering before the Lamb, and the same Shinar that opens here (Gen 10:10) where wickedness returns home in Zechariah 5:11. The article walks the seventy names verbatim, traces the gibbor link from Nephilim to Nimrod, and shows Acts 2 reversing Gen 10's lashon dispersion rather than Gen 11's saphah confusion.