In a recent Capital & Conflict email, the author invoked the account of the Tower of Babel and stated that the moral is to not allow hubris to get the better of you. Obviously that is good advice and it is certainly one lesson that can be drawn from this account. However, the problem was far more serious. These were not people simply getting a bit above themselves. This was outright rebellion – against their God who had, just a few generations earlier, given mankind the opportunity to start afresh in a cleansed but very different world. So I thought that it would be fun to analyse the text and to see if there are further lessons for modern man. All Scripture is inspired of God and beneficial for teaching (2 Tim 3:16) and so such analysis will always be valuable and compellingly pertinent today. It is a short account, found in the first nine verses of Genesis 11.
The people are heading east and perchance upon a valley in the land of Shinar, where they choose to stay, bake bricks and start to build. They had a fourfold objective:
1. Build a city
2. Build a tower with its top in the heavens
3. Make a celebrated name for themselves
4. Protect themselves against being scattered across the earth
There is a problem with each of these. Firstly, Jehovah’s commission to Adam and Eve was to be fruitful and fill the earth (Gen 1:28), reiterated to Noah in the post-diluvian era (Gen 9:1). Herding people into cities was not in the script. Such an arrangement makes it far easier for ‘man to dominate man to his harm’ (Eccl 8:9).
Why such an immense tower? The author quotes an unnamed Jewish source that apparently states that the tower was topped off by a golden, sword-wielding, image placed there to wage war with God himself. Yet verse 8 says that the city was uncompleted. What is more likely is that the world had recently been globally flooded and this was just as likely to be an insurance policy against such as repeat eventuality. Either explanation is, of course, an explicit acknowledgement of the breakdown of their relationship with, and their rebellion towards, their God – he who had sworn by the rainbow covenant that he would never again inundate the earth.
What about this celebrated name? We can never accuse Jehovah of a lack of humour. Why? The only ‘name’ we have from this account is ‘Nimrod’. Nimrod means ‘rebel’. What parent looks at their newly-born and coos ‘ah dear little Rebel’? The name Nimrod therefore is more likely to be a descriptive, reputational, epithet. We have no idea of any of their names. Satan, meaning resister, finds himself in the same boat. The allusive account of the King of Tyre in Ezekiel 28 gives an idea of his former glory. The name that is to be celebrated is ‘Jehovah’. It is the first and foremost request of our Lord’s model prayer. The composer of the 83rd Psalm had his priorities right as evidenced by v18, one of the four retained locations of the divine name in the KJV, reduced from over seven thousand instances in the original scripts and now removed entirely from most translations. Tit for tat on the name front, it seems!
Why, too, were they concerned about being scattered? Had they already received such a warning, one that they had decided to disregard in order to continue with their rebellion? The suggestion is compelling.
The most pertinent part of the account, to my mind at least, is the observation that they were of one language and that nothing would be impossible for them (v6). We live in a world where there are thousands of natural languages, yet humanity is being drawn together by the language of the internet – one language in an obvious attempt to circumvent the punishment inflicted so long ago. The original punishment for rebellion in the Garden of Eden was death caused by sin, the imperfection subsequently being inherited, genetically it would seem, by all their descendents. In the medical world, the study of genetics is moving ahead in leaps and bound. I’m most definitely no expert on the subject, but it does seem that headline news often features a white-coated professor excitedly declaring how a gene has been fixed, repaired, to cure this or that degenerative disease. Having mapped the entire human genome, it seems that it is only a matter of time before the old-age gene is equally repaired, thereby overcoming that death sentence. I’m not sure who would want to live forever in these critical times (2 Tim 3:1), but if it can be achieved, is that not two fingers up to our Creator? ‘Whatever you throw at us, we can undo! Nothing is impossible for us. We are of one language.’ The rebellion continues. But God is not one to be mocked (Gal 6:7). He will intervene again. Remarkable parallel, is it not?
Living forever is a dream of all humans. Nobody in sound mind and health wants to die. Eternal life is the gift of God (Rom 6:23). But that is in a world without sickness and death, without politics, without religion, without war, without corruption. ‘Let your Kingdom come’ is the second refrain of our Lord’s prayer. One earth, one people, one government, one perfect king. This is not the ‘Many Tongues, One Voice’ slogan of the European Council with its Babel-esque logo. Did the founding fathers of the European project think that a human-inspired world government could be created, thereby obviating the need for God’s Kingdom? Who knows? What we do know is that world peace and unity, and all the benefits that will flow from such arrangement, is the gift of God – for those who yearn for and qualify for such amazing benefits.
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