Read with Me
Genesis 11:1-9 (HCSB)
At one time the whole earth had the same language and vocabulary. As people migrated from the east, they found a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there. They said to each other, “Come, let us make oven-fired bricks.” They used brick for stone and asphalt for mortar. And they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the sky. Let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise, we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”
Then the LORD came down to look over the city and the tower that the men were building. The LORD said, “If they have begun to do this as one people all having the same language, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let Us go down there and confuse their language so that they will not understand one another’s speech.” So from there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth, and they stopped building the city. Therefore its name is called Babylon, for there the LORD confused the language of the whole earth, and from there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth.
Listen with Me
When God brought Noah and his family out of the Ark, he blessed them, and He commanded them to spread out and fill the whole earth with people (Genesis 9:1). But they didn’t do that. They did multiply greatly, growing from the eight people that had come off the ark to several thousands.
It is understandable why few if any wanted to head out into the untamed wilderness that surrounded the family enclave. As the people redeveloped some technology and life became more comfortable, leaving all that and all their close connections behind was seen as very undesirable.
Moses notes that everyone spoke the same language, which is perfectly reasonable since everyone in the world was a close relative of everyone else. There was a wide variety of skin tones, hair color and texture, eye color and shape, and even height and weight. But they were all a single people.
In an effort to stay together, the leaders of the people proposed building a large city with a central tower that included a temple on top, the significance of a tower that “with its top in the sky”. They could live in the city and worship together at the tower and its temple and be united more firmly instead of being scattered.
The main problem with the plan was not technological ability. These people were very intelligent and had recovered a significant level of technology very quickly. It was simply that this plan was directly opposed to God’s clear commandment to spread out and fill the earth. So, God intervened to not only stop the construction, but also to move people apart from one another.
The easiest way to break the unity of the people was to confuse their languages so that they couldn’t communicate with each other. This was accomplished in a moment. People who had been conversing with one another suddenly couldn’t understand each other. And since God put the new language in each person’s mind as well as in their mouth, they thought in their new language, and were completely unaware that their own language had changed. They only knew that the sounds coming from the mouths of their friends and neighbors were nonsense.
Across the way, though, they heard words that could understand, and before long clumps of people who spoke the same language began to form. It wasn’t long before those small groups began to leave the area in search of a place where they could live and grow. They took with them their own spectra of physical characteristics that became set physical characteristics within that language group due to inbreeding within each small group of people. Some the people groups settled close to the land of Shinar where they had begun, but many continued to spread far afield until there were human beings on every continent. Moses had already outlined where the various people groups, now determine primarily by a language, settled (Genesis 10:5). So, God’s plan began to move forward once again.
Pray with Me
Father, there is a two-fold emphasis in this episode that really stands out to me. The first part is the fact that You really do have a plan that You are working, and that Your commandments are intended to guide us into doing our part to further Your goals. The second part is that trying to seize control of Your plan by rebelling against Your clear commands is ultimately futile. It is foolish to try to rebel in our own puny, finite strength against the God who can confuse our languages in a moment’s time. It is much better, and much more beneficial for us, to yield to Your sovereign requirements. Thank You for revealing these truths so clearly, Lord. Amen.