“... let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”
Genesis 11:4
At the start of Genesis chapter 9 immediately after the flood God told Noah and his sons to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” Here in Genesis chapter 11 we see that Noah’s descendants have migrated eastward and have decided to build a great city and a tower that reaches up into the heavens. Their purpose for this was to “make a name for themselves and to avoid being scattered all over the face of the earth.” This may not seem like a bad thing at first glance, but it demonstrated great pride and arrogance to God. Not only were they disobeying God’s direct command to spread out and fill the earth, they were relying completely on themselves and trying to build a tower that would bring themselves glory and fame.
As we continue through chapter 11, we see that God comes down to check out the city and the tower that they are building and he is not pleased. He sees a prideful, arrogant, self-sufficient people who have rejected God and taken things completely into their own hands. They may have thought they were building a tower that would allow them to reach heaven on their own or they may have felt the tower would protect them from another great flood (which God had already promised he would never do). In any event, God chooses a unique way to intervene and to slow down the growing pride of the human race.
Up to this point in time, “the whole earth had one language and a common form of speech” (Gen 11:1). This makes perfect sense since everyone came from common ancestry (Adam and Eve first, and then Noah and his sons after the flood). This was about to change as we read in verse 7 how God decides to confuse the language and scatter the people into different groups with different languages. This is the origin of multiple languages and this was the means that God used to disperse the people and halt the building of the tower. Even to this day, by dividing the world into different languages and different cultures, God has hindered the rise of a global anti-Christian state. God knows what will happen if we evil, self-serving humans were allowed to unite in one language and one government. The world will get a taste of this unrestricted evil when the end times come, but anyone who has read to the end of “The Book” knows that in the end God wins and everything is going to be alright (actually, better than alright!).
In the meantime, as we reflect on the story of the Tower of Babel, we should remember how easy it is to get caught up in the sin of pride and arrogance; whether we want to make a name for ourselves or even just think that we can handle things on our own without God. Instead of trying to make a name for ourselves, “whatever we do, we should do it all for the glory of God.” (1 Cor 10:31).
written by Joe Hust