Saturday
Saturday
The Tower of Babel
So the LORD scattered them … over all the earth, and they stopped building the city.
Genesis 11:8
It seems that the tower of Babel was a ziggurat, a huge Babylonian terraced pyramid. Several have been excavated, and the earliest is said to date from the third millennium BC.
What was it about the tower of Babel that aroused the displeasure of God? After all, human technological prowess is due to the inventive genius of human beings made in God’s image. What was wrong, then? It was the builders’ self-centered motivation.
Firstly, they were guilty of an act of disobedience. God’s original command to human beings, repeated after the flood, had been to “fill the earth and subdue it” (1:28; see 9:1). The descendants of Noah began to do it, but when they reached the alluvial Mesopotamian plain, they “settled there” (11:2). Instead of pressing on to explore the earth and develop its potential, they settled down in comfortable security. The world is still suffering from their disobedience. For we have not yet solved the energy problem. Nor have we invented a cheap way to desalinate seawater so as to irrigate the deserts and feed the hungry.
Secondly, building the tower was an act of presumption. “Let us make a name for ourselves,” they said, “by constructing a tower that reaches to the heavens.” Unwilling to remain within earthly limits, they aspired to heaven, the dwelling place of God. So throughout Scripture Babylon represents that proud insolence that the Greeks called hubris. It is the very essence of sin.
No wonder God’s judgment fell upon them. Firstly, he scattered them over all the earth, obliging them to do what they had failed to do voluntarily. Secondly, as the means to their scattering, he confused their languages. For language is a living, changing thing; it can increase the isolation of communities from each other, just as isolation can cause further language change.
The story of Babel looks forward to its reversal on the great day of Pentecost, when people heard in their own languages the wonders of God.
For further reading: Genesis 11:1–9