I Will Make Your Name Great

From Babel to Bamidbar

The motif of names threads the entire Torah from Adam’s naming of the animals to the Babel builders search for a name, to Abraham’s blessing, to the list of names that descend to Egypt, to the command to take a census in the opening of Bamidbar. Let’s look at some of these sources.

Come, let us build us a city, and a tower with its top in the sky, to make a name for ourselves; else we shall be scattered all over the world. (Genesis 11:4)

The Lord came down to look at the city and tower that man had built, and the Lord said, “If, as one people with one language for all, this is how they have begun to act, then nothing that they may propose to do will be out of their reach. Let us, then, go down and confound their speech there, so that they shall not understand one another's speech.” Thus the Lord scattered them from there over the face of the whole earth; and they stopped building the city. (Genesis 11:7-8)

I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you shall be a blessing. (Genesis 12:2)

These are the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob, each coming with his household. (Exodus 1:1)

But the Israelites were fertile and prolific; they multiplied and increased very greatly, so that the land was filled with them. (Exodus 1:7)

Take a census of the whole Israelite company by the clans of its ancestral houses, listing the names, every male, head by head. (Numbers 1:2)

I am also acquiring Ruth the Moabite, the wife of Mahlon, as my wife, so as to perpetuate the name of the deceased upon his estate, that the name of the deceased may not disappear from among his kinsmen and from the gate of his home town. You are witnesses today.” (Ruth 4:10)

A good name is better than fragrant oil. (Ecclesiastes 7:1)

Anyone who teaches Torah to his fellow’s son, Scripture ascribes it to him as if he sired him. (Talmud, Sanhedrin 19b)

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Three pivotal moments in Torah create an arc that revolutionizes human identity: the dispersion at Babel, the proliferation in Egypt, and the census in the wilderness. At the center stands God’s promise to Avraham that would transform the very nature of what it means to have a name. This trajectory moves from collective anonymity to individuated sanctity, revealing why King Solomon declared that a good name surpasses even fragrant oil, because the name itself becomes the vessel of eternity.

At Babel, humanity declares: “Come, let us build us a city, and a tower with its top in the sky, to make a name for ourselves.” This represents humanity's failed attempt to create meaning through collective identity, building a tower reaching toward heaven. Their sin wasn't architectural ambition but spiritual presumption; the builers sought to create a shem that would unite them against divine will.

The irony cuts deep: in seeking to make themselves a name, they lose the very possibility of individual names. The text records no personal names among the tower builders; they become an undifferentiated mass pursuing collective significance while sacrificing personal identity. God’s response confounds their language and scatters them across the earth, creating the opposite of their intention. Instead of one great collective name, humanity disperses, but now each group develops its own identity.

Into this chaos comes the divine counter-proposal to Abraham: “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you shall be a blessing.” This promise to Avraham represents theological revolution. Where Babel failed through human ambition to create collective meaning, God promises to create individual significance that becomes universally blessing. The Abrahamic blessing connects the meaning of his fatherhood (Abraham’s name literally means “father of mulitudes”) to the amplification of his name. As we will see, a name is not just a label, but a kind of spiritual lineage. In contrast to totalitarian societies that seek to mint replicas of themselves, Abraham will sire many by teaching monotheism and connecting this core teaching to the power of the individual name. To be created in the divine image is to have a name, just as God has a name.

God’s promise to Abraham establishes that a “great name” doesn’t simply mean fame but ontological significance: Avraham’s name will represent a new mode of being in the world. The name becomes the expression of essential nature, the soul’s divine signature.

The opening of Exodus continues the theme: “These are the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob, each coming with his household.” The Torah specifically lists their names to show that despite the long sojourn in Egypt, each maintained individual identity and spiritual heritage. The text preserves both individual identity and familial structure, maintaining the balance that the Babel generation lost. Most significantly: “But the Israelites were fertile and prolific; they multiplied and increased very greatly, so that the land was filled with them.” This isn't merely demographic growth but the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham. Each new child represents another bearer of the “great name.” The fruitfulness of the line is a fruitfulness tethered to an appreciation for the singular value of a human life. “Say their names.” Underscoring this, Pharaoh and the King of Egypt are unnamed, while heroes Shifra and Pua are.

The census in Bamidbar represents the theological culmination of God’s promise to Abraham and God’s challenge to the Babel builders. God commands: “Take a census of the whole Israelite company by the clans of its ancestral houses, listing the names, every male, head by head.” The census doesn’t merely count bodies but names, acknowledging that each individual carries divine significance. In the midst of an excercise that is apparently procedural we find a reminder to name, to see the dignity of the individual soul, and to connect the project of multiplying back to Abraham. Demographic growth not for the sake of demographic growth, but as a demonstrative fulfillment of Abraham’s teaching: the way to change the world is not to unite everyone around an abstract cause, but to build a family. From Plato’s imagined guardians to Hitler to Mao, authoritarian societies take aim at the family unit and seek to commandeer children to the cause of their monolithic Tower.

The multiplication of the Israelite names in Egypt, now freed to wander in the desert as they prepare to receive Torah and enter a Promised Land, fulfills God’s promise to Abraham - his descendants now constitute a people where every single person has a name that matters in the cosmic order.

The Talmud teaches: “Anyone who teaches Torah to his fellow’s son, Scripture ascribes it to him as if he sired him.” The Lubavitcher Rebbe explains this means that through Torah study, “one is connecting that other person with the source of his life... causing G-d to renew the existence of that other person.” Abraham only had two toledot, two progeny, Isaac and Ishmael. Yet he is the father of many because he and Sarah brought many into their tent and shared Torah with them (according to the Midrash). But we can also think about Abraham’s legacy through the lens of Bamidbar; we are Abraham’s children because we are sired by his educational lineage, and sired again by Moses at Sinai.

The now obscure institution of yibum (Levirite marriage) provides crucial insight into the metaphysical significance of names. When Boaz declares his intention “so as to perpetuate the name of the deceased upon his estate, that the name of the deceased may not disappear from among his kinsmen,” he reveals that yibum preserves not merely memory but ontological continuity. The shem represents the soul’s eternal aspect requiring preservation.

When the Torah counts by listing names, head by head, it’s performing cosmic yibum, ensuring every soul’s name is preserved and counted in the divine ledger.

The medieval philosophical tradition argues that the soul’s individual identity persists eternally, and this identity is most essentially captured in the name. Unlike the Babel generation, which sought anonymous collective significance, or the Egyptian period, which threatened individual identity through oppression, the wilderness census establishes that every Jewish soul has eternal individual significance while remaining part of the greater whole. Each soul has a unique spiritual mission contributing to the cosmic order. The census in Bamidbar becomes a roll call of cosmic functionaries, each playing an irreplaceable role in the divine plan. When you have eternal significance through the sheer fact that you are, you don’t need to make a name for yourself. Rather, you can receive the name you always were, by becoming more fully yourself: “Lech l’cha” (Go for yourself; Go towards yourself).

This arc from Babel to Bamidbar establishes a dialectical principle still relevant today. The failed tower represents the danger of losing individual identity in collective movements, while the wilderness census demonstrates how authentic community preserves and elevates individual significance. The Rebbe’s teaching about spiritual procreation through Torah study provides the mechanism by which this works practically. Each time we engage in Torah study with another person, we’re participating in the same process that transformed the anonymous builders of Babel into the individually named members of the wilderness community.

In a world in which both hyper-individualism and mass conformity threaten authentic human dignity, the Torah offers a third way: individual significance that contributes to collective meaning, personal names that add up to a great Name, souls that are simultaneously unique and connected. The promise to Abraham continues to unfold each time someone’s name is called in Torah, each time a soul is renewed through study, each time the great Name is made greater through the multiplication of great names that serve it.

Yitgadal v’yitkadash Sh’mei Rabbah.

The census in Bamidbar thus represents not just a demographic record but a theological statement: In God’s kingdom, every name counts because every name contains eternity. And through Torah, they create new worlds.

Shabbat Shalom and Chag Sameach,

Zohar Atkins

Etz Hasadeh