1And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. 2And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.
3And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter.
4And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.
5And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.
6And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.
7Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.
8So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.
9Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.
Now we come to the story of the tower of Babel. From chapter 10 we know that Nimrod had a kingdom in Babel, it is assumed by most that it was built by him; but, he is not referenced by name in chapter 11 (remembering that the original books did not have chapters).
These verses begin by telling us that the whole world had one language, this is not surprising given the fact that they all came from Noah. In fact, science tells us that one woman is the mother of all living humans and that would also imply that at one time there was only one language.
While it does not say who these people are, it would appear to be Noah's decendents as a group, all of then. It says that they decided to go eastward and settle in a new area. They decide to make a City and give themselves a name in order to not be scattered all over the earth. Now, when they said this they had no reason to believe that it would upset God or that it would result in them being scattered. So why did they fear being scattered?
Imagine you are the only people on the earth, you would believe in safety in numbers and want to be unified. They all spoke the same language, had the same history and knew they were related. They built the town to live in and the tower as a statement to their solidarity. In verse 6 God says that they are united and therefore capable of anything. This has fascinating consequences are questions that it raises. It is what God says next that is the most interesting, he says that with one language and one community that humans are capable of anything we set our minds to.
God says that we are capable of doing anything we put our minds too, why did he stop us then? I believe it is because we had not discovered ourselves, our uniqueness, our individualness. Like I said in an earlier post, God created things and then set them to naturally find out what their limits were. Man preferred to remain the same; but, at Gods prompting this could not remain. It says that God scattered man in order to confuse our one language. It is often assumed that God confused people's language in a second; but, again while that may have been what happened, it is not what it says. The bible says that they (God, son and holy ghost) decided to confuse the language and scattered the people which could have been how the language changed over time.
We have to be very careful about reading things into the bible that it does not say, it is okay to speculate; but, we should recognize when there are answers that are possible other than what we have been told. It is not critical to the story; but, understanding the possibilities can help us to better understand how God acts.
I want to point out something else, God did not punish the people for their achievement nor did he tell them that they had done wrong. It is part of our nature to seek to achieve, it is built in us; but, it must be directed properly. A problem with people is that we are always looking for shortcuts and to achieve things before understanding the possible consequences. It is about being mature enough to enjoy certain freedoms, it is about being ready for certain situations, it is about paitence.
No comments:
Post a Comment