To worship the host of heaven, the nations used “high places” such as housetops, mountains, and pyramids, which were patterned after the “Tower of Babel”. Although there is nothing to indicate in Genesis 11 that the “Tower of Babel” was a “temple-tower”, it appears that this was the first tower ever built. It would then only be logical and probable that all these later towers were imitations of the first.

This “tower” along with its pompous and ornate ceremonies so impressed the original inhabitants of Babel that they duplicated it wherever they went, making the Tower of Babel the prototype for all other pyramids around the globe. (www.accordingtothescriptures.org/archeology/towermap.html)

Whether in Babylon, Egypt, Canaan, Central America, or the mountains of Peru, almost every culture around the world used “high places” to worship the host of heaven and to offer up their sacrifices.

Bear in mind that Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, and their offspring “were the nations divided in the earth after the flood” (Genesis 10:32). In effect, each family became a little colony of Babel, each with their own language.

In their new regions of habitation they built “high places” to worship the “host of heaven”. Each tower was usually consecrated to the guardian divinity of that particular city, and they kept their gods in the, “houses of the high places” (1 Kings 13:32, 2 Kings 17:29-33, 23:19-20). The “houses [Hebrew: bayith, also translated temple] of the high places” were the temples built upon the summits of their “towers”, where they sacrificed and, “burned incense unto Baal, to the sun, and to the moon, and to the planets, and to all the host of heaven” (2 Kings 23:5).

This religion spread like cancer and metastasized into all kinds of idolatry, so that “every nation made gods of their own, and put them in the houses of the high places ... every nation in their cities wherein they dwelt” (2 Kings 17:29).

There were sun gods, moon gods, rain gods, fertility gods, and gods for every force of nature, around the globe, amidst every tribe and nation. These similarities could only be possible if they had a common geographical and cultural origin and the Bible clearly declares that all their roots go back to Babel.

When Israel entered the “land of Canaan”, they found the Canaanites infected with this same idolatrous worship (Psalm 106:35-38). They worshipped in “high places” (Numbers 33:51-52), the object of their adoration was the “host of heaven” (Deuteronomy 4:19), and they made idols to represent the gods they worshipped.

When Israel entered the Land of Canaan they were commanded by the Lord to drive them out of the land and to destroy all their idols and high places. But who were the Canaanites anyway? Where did they come from?

As we stated earlier, the whole human race descended from Noah and his family. Noah had a son named “Ham” (Genesis 9:18), and he had a son named “Egypt” (Hebrew: Mitsrayim), however, Ham also had a son named “Canaan” (Genesis 10:6) who was one of the original rebels at Babel. When the Lord scattered the rebels, Canaan and his family migrated down to the corridor between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River, which eventually became known as “the land of Canaan”, and they too brought with them the religion of Babel.