(Click here to read Genesis 11:1-9)
To my mind this story is one of the strangest in the Old Testament. Why is God apparently so vindictive, thwarting the people's perfectly innocent desire to become a great people?
Certainly, they don't seem to include God in their calculations and ambitions, so perhaps that gives us a clue.
Confusing them by rendering them incapable of communicating is a pretty cunning plan - a 'divide and conquer' strategy taken to extremes. Each language group will inevitably distrust the others and ensure that joint projects are doomed to failure.
And I suspect a tower built of clay bricks and bitumen would collapse under its own weight before it got to any great height, so why didn't the Lord just let them get on with it and make fools of themselves?
Is it just a bizarre story to try to explain why people with a supposed common ancestry in Adam ended up talking in other tongues?
What do you think? Add a comment and share your wisdom...! (Just click on the 'Comments' link below)
I am remembering that 'in the beginning was the Word'. Disregard of this Word (ie not accepting God's authority) led to the expulsion of humans from the Garden, or the loss of close fellowship with God.
ReplyDeleteI think I want to make a link with the privileged access to the Word (ie the language and being of God) that was the created intention for humans, and the subsequent loss of human ability to hear the Word because of sin. Humans could not be trusted with God's knowledge and power (see Genesis 3), and still can not. This act of God in Genesis 11 was to protect us from ourselves.
Is it more bizarre a tale than 2 Kings 2:23-25?
the service on radio 4 from a church in north london on sunday was a helpful illustration of the tower of Babel story. They have 40 languages locally. The preacher talked of a single language eg. english creating a much to powerful situation as has happened in the financial crises affecting the west - but the multicultural multi language situation gave more opportunities for explanation and mutual understanding as well as richness in culture,
ReplyDeletePresent day writer and theologian Gordon J Wenham suggests that Babel is the scene of the last great universal judgement on mankind in primeval history. The confusion of languages making human cooperation on godless projects impossible. A judgement on the arrogance of human kind that it could, by its own efforts, draw near to God, and a reminder such as the pain of childbirth and the toil of agriculture (Genesis 3:16-19) of divine judgement on sin. But Babel, symbol of universal judgement, is the setting for the beginning of the story of salvation, for Ur, the home of Abraham, is not far south of Babylon. The beginning of the story of salvation by grace by believing. For it was Abraham's belief that was "credited to him as righteousness" (Genesis 15:6, Romans 4:3, "by faith" Hebrews 11.)
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