THE TOWER OF BABEL
Genesis 11
Key Verses
11:1-4 There was a time when the whole world—all the descendants of Noah—spoke the same common language. Migrating eastward, many of them settled in the plains near Babylonia. They said to one another, “Now that we’ve learned to make hard bricks of mud by baking them at high temperatures…let’s build a magnificent city with a central temple-tower so tall it links heaven and earth. It will make us famous all around and provide the means for us to stay together as a people. Otherwise, we will scatter here and there without a central attraction to keep us in the vicinity.”
11:5-9 God took notice of what the people were trying to do by building a city surrounding an imposing temple-tower. He thought… “A prideful, determined people unified by a common language is a step in the wrong direction. …They will resolve to do the worst things together. …To keep that from happening we’ll cause them to speak diverse languages that are unintelligible to one another.” After losing the ability to communicate, the people scattered to far distant lands and their haughty enterprise failed. For that reason the place came to be called “Babel”—for there God caused humans to speak different languages that drove them apart.
Basic Message
Noah’s descendants built a city and a temple-tower that was a direct challenge to God’s authoritative rule. God’s response was to interrupt the endeavor by scattering the city’s inhabitants and disrupting their reliance on a single language to succeed at their collective goal. The people’s various languages would sound like ‘babel’ to one another, making communication and thus cooperation impossible. They would leave for various destinations and become permanently separated from one another.
Comments
* This is scripture’s first mention of a corporate challenge to God’s rule. The seemingly benign effort to build a tower as high as possible was nothing less than an endeavor to live without God, misusing natural resources in a vain attempt to be totally absorbed in selfish gain—the same mistaken motivation that drove Adam and Eve to eat the forbidden fruit.
* A number of early civilizations, most notably the Indus Valley civilization in India, overused their available natural resources in wood-based brickmaking that attempted to sustain an overpopulated city. The city collapsed and its inhabitants scattered, leaving only ruins today. Once any population is scattered, in time their shared language will branch into different dialects and, eventually, different languages altogether. That is how languages evolve. In that shared language is central to shared culture, those who speak unintelligible languages behave and think very differently from one another.
* The central lesson in these passages is that living in ways contrary to God’s plan and purposes will in time prove unsustainable and self-defeating. Harmonious relations among people will suffer, as will man’s relation with nature. Such is the design of the world God has made and calls everyone to live in concert with.
Biblical Themes
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15
