A. They were elevating themselves.
“Let us make for ourselves a name.”
https://biblehub.com/commentaries/genesis/11-4.htm
“The object of the builders was twofold: first, they wished to have some central beacon which might guide them in their return from their wanderings; and secondly, they had a distinctly ambitious object, for by remaining as one nation they would be able to reduce to obedience all the tribes now perpetually wandering away from them, and so would “make them a name.”
They wanted to make a name for themselves. The very first of God’s commands that I mentioned earlier is that man’s purpose in life is to recognize God as creator and Lord. This city and tower were in direct defiance of that command.
Romans 13:3-5 For rulers are not a cause of fear for []good behavior, but for evil. Do you want to have no fear of that authority? Do what is good, and you will have praise from the same; 4 for it is a minister of God to you for good. But if you do what is evil, be afraid; for it does not bear the sword in vain, for it is a minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath on the one who practices evil. 5 Therefore it is necessary to be in subjection, not only because of that wrath, but also because of conscience.
One commentator I read stated that this effort was probably spear-headed by a single individual, and there is one candidate that fits the bill. One person who had the arrogance, ambition and ability to build a city-state. He is mentioned in the genealogy of Ham. He is the grandson of Ham.
10: 6 The sons of Ham were Cush and [d]Mizraim and Put and Canaan. 7 The sons of Cush were Seba and Havilah and Sabtah and Raamah and Sabteca; and the sons of Raamah were Sheba and Dedan. 8 Now Cush [e]was the father of Nimrod; he began to be a mighty one on the earth. 9 He was a mighty hunter before Yahweh; therefore it is said, “Like Nimrod a mighty hunter before Yahweh.” 10 The beginning of his kingdom was [f]Babel and Erech and Accad and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. 11 From that land he went out to Assyria and built Nineveh and Rehoboth-Ir and Calah, 12 and Resen between Nineveh and Calah; that is the great city.
Traditionally it is Nimrod who leads the population to build the tower. And Scripture does set him apart. He is the only one that we get any detail about. He is called a mighty hunter before the Lord.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers
(9) He was a mighty hunter.—When men were still leading a pastoral life, and were but poorly armed, the war with wild beasts was a most important and dangerous occupation. Probably from single combats with fierce animals, Nimrod, now recognised as a public benefactor, was led to organise hunts upon a large scale, and so, like Romulus, became the chief of a band of the most spirited and vigorous shepherds. “With their aid, he next undertook the more serious duty of introducing order and rule among men who had hitherto lived in scattered groups without control, and without the means of suppressing feuds and of punishing deeds of violence.
Before the Lord.—A strong superlative.
My personal opinion is that this is how many dinosaurs went extinct. Certain animals were perceived as a threat, or at best a menace. So men arose and went out in bands to hunt and kill them.
But why does it say that he was a mighty hunter, “before the Lord?” Well, the Hebrew words actually mean, “in the sight of” or “in the presence of” the Lord. And they can be a way of saying that a person or people are doing something in open defiance of the Lord. Genesis 13:13 uses it for the men of Sodom. Genesis 13:13 Now the men of Sodom were evil and sinners, exceedingly so, against Yahweh. The word against here is the same one that is translated “before” the Lord in regard to Nimrod. How could he defy God by hunting? Well, this is conjecture, but he may have been the first of the macho macho men, like the ones who slaughtered bison on the North American continent, not for meat, but just to say they brought down a mighty beast. He may have initially gone out hunting for right purposes; for food, or because a wild animal was threatening the community of people, but then he may have turned in his purpose and decided to whole sale slaughter some types of animals. And that directly contradicts God’s command for humanity to manage creation, and for the animals to “be fruitful and multiply.”
lest we be scattered over the face of the whole earth
Nimrod by tradition, was the motivating force behind building this tower and city as a means of protection, centralization, and power.
By the way, the ancient historian Josephus states of Nimrod,
He also said he would be revenged on God, if he should have a mind to drown the world again; for that he would build a tower too high for the waters to be able to reach and that he would avenge himself on God for destroying their forefathers (Antiquities of the Jews, Book 1, Chapter 4).
So, what may have began as a simple animal problem, evolves into a egocentric leader building an army and deciding to consolidate his power over people by building a tower and city. Nimrod was a city builder. Even after the confusion of languages at the tower of Babel, he continues his acquisition of power.
10 The beginning of his kingdom was [f]Babel and Erech and Accad and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. 11 From that land he went out to Assyria and built Nineveh and Rehoboth-Ir and Calah, 12 and Resen between Nineveh and Calah; that is the great city.
Out of this beginning came the kingdom of Hammurabi, and eventually the Babylonian and Assyrian Empire.
And if the nations that came out of the cities he built tell us anything about him, it is that he was cruel and power mad. This is what the Bible had to say about the later Assyrian invasion of the Northern kingdom of Israel.
Isaiah 8: 7 Now therefore, behold, the Lord is about to bring on them the mighty and abundant waters of the [e]River— The king of Assyria and all his glory; And it will rise up over all its channels and go over all its banks. 8 Then it will sweep on into Judah; it will overflow and pass through; It will reach even to the neck; And the spread of its wings will [f]fill the breadth of [g]Your land, O Immanuel. 9 “Be broken, O peoples, and be [h]shattered; And give ear, all remote places of the earth. Gird yourselves, yet be [i]shattered; Gird yourselves, yet be [j]shattered.
Then Isaiah also prophecies to the southern kingdom about the coming Babylonian invasion.
Isaiah 13:1 The [a]oracle concerning Babylon which Isaiah the son of Amoz beheld. 15 Anyone who is found will be pierced through, And anyone who is captured will fall by the sword. 16 Their infants also will be dashed to pieces Before their eyes; Their houses will be plundered And their wives ravished.
That is what will become of the later cities that Nimrod constructs. And now he seems to be spearheading the construction of the tower of Babel and a great city.
So, what is the sin of Babel? Defiance against God’s command to spread over the earth, and an attempt at self-glorification. They take their cues from Eve who was tempted to be like God, and ultimately from Satan himself who desired to exalt himself above the throne of God.
But there is also something else here.
B. There is possible idolatry
It’s interesting that they are making a tower “to reach the heavens.”
https://biblehub.com/commentaries/genesis/11-4.htm
“As the highest stage in an Assyrian or Babylonian pyramid, Ziggurat, was surmounted by a shrine of the deity,”
It is also interesting that towers, pyramids, ziggurats and mounds that have been discovered later in our history have often been built with a religious purpose. Sumerian Ziggurats for example were like pyramids but with tiers placed on each other until they reached a building on top that was supposed to be the home of a god. It is, I believe, another evidence for the truth of Scripture. This original tower was begun as an idolatrous structure. That may have been what they meant by “building its top to reach the heavens.”
The structure—a tower made from man-made building materials—would be a symbol of their power and self-sufficiency. God saw that Nimrod and the people were working together toward a common goal. But unfortunately, the goal they were working toward was steeped in arrogance and in direct opposition to God.
In their attempt to maintain unity, create a name for themselves, provide their own security, and possibly start an idolatrous form of worship—God’s people rebelled against His sovereign authority and embraced their own self-sufficiency. They felt they didn’t need God to rule over them—they could rule themselves; they could reach the heavens on their own terms, with their own hands, by their own means.
So, what then?
5 Then Yahweh came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. 6 And Yahweh said, “Behold, they are one people, and they all have [d]the same language. And this is what they have begun to do. So now nothing which they purpose to do will be [e]impossible for them. 7 Come, let Us go down and there confuse their [f]language, so that they will not understand one another’s [g]language.” 8 So Yahweh scattered them from there over the face of the whole earth; and they stopped building the city. 9 Therefore its name was called [h]Babel, because there Yahweh confused the [i]language of the whole earth; and from there Yahweh scattered them over the face of the whole earth.
God stopped its construction by confounding the languages of the builders. Then what happened? The builders leave the area in language groups, and what do they do? They travel to places around the world, and build towers, pyramids, ziggurats and mounds.
I began last week by talking about the 270 cultures around our globe that have flood stories. But did you know that many cultures also have tower stories, and what is more curious than that, many have towers.
We often only think of the pyramids in Egypt when we consider these kinds of ancient structures. But there are pyramids in Egypt, Peru, Mexico, the Sudan, Iran, Nubia, Ur, China, Indonesia, Cambodia, Iraq, Guatemala, Italy, and Spain. 5000 of them depending on how you classify a pyramid or ziggurat or mound.
Pyramid: a monumental structure with a square or triangular base and sloping sides that meet in a point at the top,
Ziggurat: a rectangular stepped tower, sometimes surmounted by a temple.
A Mound is simply a manmade hill made of earth. Ancient people would bring in earth and pile it in the form of a pyramid, and often build steps up the side, and some sort of structure on top. The native Americans built them, in Tennessee, Illinois, Louisiana, Ohio, Georgia, Alabama, and Oklahoma. There are thousands of these mounds.
Now, let’s go back to how I introduced this sermon. If we have over 5000 pyramid like structures found around the world, and thousands of pyramid shaped mounds around the world, you either have to believe that they each came up with the idea independently, or that the idea came from an original source.
So, did they all build “towers” randomly in places all over the world, or did they all have a common experience that they tried to replicate after they migrated from the original tower? You might chalk up all the pyramids, ziggurats, and mounds to coincidence, or copies but there is something else you need to know.
Did you know that there are multiple cultures which also have tower building stories? The Sumerians, in Islam, the Greeks and Romans, in Mexico-the Aztecs. In Nepal and Botswana, and others. This interesting one comes out of Arizona.
“Still another story, attributed to the Tohono O'odham people, holds that Montezuma escaped a great flood, then became wicked and attempted to build a house reaching to heaven, but the Great Spirit destroyed it with thunderbolts.”
This story comes out of India.
The Mikir tribe in northeastern India tells of the descendants of Ram who were strong men and were growing dissatisfied with earth and aspired to conquer heaven. They began to build a tower.
“Higher and higher rose the building, till at last the gods and demons feared lest these giants should become the masters of heaven, as they already were of earth. So they confounded their speech, and scattered them to the four corners of the world. Hence arose all the various tongues of mankind.”
Polynesians on the island of Hao said that Rata and his three sons survived a great flood. Then
“they made an attempt to erect a building by which they could reach the sky, and see the creator god Vatea [Atea]; but the god in anger chased the builders away, broke down the building, and changed their language, so that they spoke diverse tongues.”
A legend of the Gaikho tribe of Burma (Myanmar) says,
“In the days of Pan-dan-man, the people determined to build a pagoda that should reach up to heaven. . . . When the pagoda was half way up to heaven, God came down and confounded the language of the people, so that they could not understand each other. Then the people scattered, and Than-mau-rai, the father of the Gaikho tribe, came west, with eight chiefs, and settled in the valley of the Sitang.”
So, how did all of these peoples just happen to have a tower building story and language confusion that matches details from the Bible? Did they all copy a common story? Did they all make it up independently? Or were they all descendants of the people who experienced it?
So, the people of the tower of Babel sinned.
God’s justice and His grace could not allow this treachery to continue. “So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth” (Genesis 11:8-9).
After the scattering, the Bible tells us that Nimrod continued to rule, reign, and build kingdoms for himself. “The first centers of his kingdom were Babylon, Uruk, Akkad and Kalneh, in Shinar. From that land he went to Assyria, where he built Nineveh, Rehoboth Ir, Calah and Resen, which is between Nineveh and Calah—which is the great city” (Genesis 8:9-10).
So far we have addressed two doctrinal questions that come out of the story of the tower of Babel; Are we all one race? And what did people do with God’s good gifts? They followed their sinful, self-driven natures.
I. How does the world of men survive?
God instituted a means to put a check on sin. God responded with grace.
5 Then Yahweh came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. 6 And Yahweh said, “Behold, they are one people, and they all have [d]the same language. And this is what they have begun to do. So now nothing which they purpose to do will be [e]impossible for them. 7 Come, let Us go down and there confuse their [f]language, so that they will not understand one another’s [g]language.” 8 So Yahweh scattered them from there over the face of the whole earth; and they stopped building the city. 9 Therefore its name was called [h]Babel, because there Yahweh confused the [i]language of the whole earth; and from there Yahweh scattered them over the face of the whole earth.
We have often read the story of the tower of Babel as though scattering the people by dividing their languages was a punishment from God. I submit to you that it was grace from God. If God had left them to their devices, where would it have led? It would not only lead to forsaking God and His eventual judgment, but it would have led to a one-world kingdom.
Some people, even today, think that all of humanities problems would be solved if we could just get all the nations to surrender their power to a one-world power. But the opposite is true.
https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/absolute-power-corrupts-absolutely.html
“Absolute power corrupts absolutely” is the best known quotation of the 19th century British politician Lord Acton. He borrowed the idea from several other writers who had previously expressed the same thought in different words.”
He stated this as an axiom whose truth had been observed throughout the course of human history. The truth is that when power becomes centralized in one person, or one group of people, if the circumstances evolve to the place where there is no one who can tell them “no,” no one can defy them, they will become corrupt.
What would have happened in Babel is what has happened repeatedly in history when someone gets massive power over a people. Power, privilege, comfort, and care are centralized to those in power, and the rest of the people become impoverished slaves. And the only thing that ends up stopping these despots is a competing power.
It was God’s grace that divided the world into nations. God worked in history to give us institutions that would put the brakes on mankind’s march to sinfulness. God gave marriage and family for that cause. Developing loyalties to a family curtails selfishness. God also gave government as a means of curtailing sin. a
In the same way, languages and nations were separated in order to curtail sin. God said.
Genesis 11: 5 Then Yahweh came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built.6 And Yahweh said, “Behold, they are one people, and they all have [d]the same language. And this is what they have begun to do. So now nothing which they purpose to do will be [e]impossible for them.
Some people read this as though God is trying to keep all the power to Himself. But what we need to keep in mind is that the people were united in an unholy, ungodly purpose. Like Genesis 3:22,
22 Then Yahweh God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us [l]to know good and evil; and now, lest he send forth his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever”—23 therefore Yahweh God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to [m]cultivate the ground from which he was taken.24 So He drove the man out; and at the east of the garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword which turned every direction to [n]guard the way to the tree of life.
He prevented Adam and Eve from reentering the Garden to gain immortality, because then they would have lived forever in their state of sin, curse, and decay. It was a mercy on God’s part to prevent that from happening. And here, if God had left humanity unchecked, they would continue in kingdom, building, self-centeredness, idolatry, and eventually enslavement to a single monarch.
So, He divides the people by language to create competing nations. It’s the same principle that our government of the United States was built; balance of powers. When all people have a self-centered sinful nature, you can’t allow any one person or group to centralize power, or everyone will be their slaves.
So, what exactly happened? He changed their group languages.
7 Come, let Us go down and there confuse their [f]language, so that they will not understand one another’s [g]language.”
It wasn’t that he gave every individual a separate language. That would have created chaos, and God is not the author of confusion. Rather, He gave a separate language to individual clans. How many languages would have originated at Babel? No one can say for sure. But we have a way of making a very educated guess.
Today there are approximately 7151 languages in the world today. But many of these wouldn’t have been the languages that God imposed on the people of the tower of Babel. We know that each of these modern languages is part of one of 142 language families. That means that the languages we know today, have come from a common ancestry. But linguists have further studied these languages, their similarities and differences, and come up with 50 proto-languages from which they believe the language families derived.
For example,
So, although today we know of English, German, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, and other languages, they all came from Germanic. And Germanic would have come from proto-germanic. Now some linguists also believe that these 50 proto languages came from earlier languages, so the number of languages that God gave at the tower of Babel may have been 50, or even fewer.
By the way, this is another great mystery to people who don’t know or believe the Bible. The flood stories, and the towers and tower stories around the world are a mystery, and the origin of language is a mystery.
How did language just appear suddenly? Different people have developed different theories. The theories can be divided into two categories.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_language?scrlybrkr=c8e9f67a
"Continuity theories" build on the idea that language exhibits so much complexity that one cannot imagine it simply appearing from nothing in its final form; therefore it must have evolved from earlier pre-linguistic systems among humans' primate ancestors.
"Discontinuity theories" take the opposite approach—that language, as a unique trait which cannot be compared to anything found among non-humans, must have appeared fairly suddenly during the course of human evolution.
Here’s the evolutionists problem. The evidence shows that all these different languages just seemed to have popped up in history all of a sudden. There is no long history of slow development. How do you explain that? They can’t come up with an explanation to explain the evidence.
https://www.abarim-publications.com/Meaning/Babel.html
In his even more delightful book The Mother Tongue, Bill Bryson states, "One of the greatest mysteries of prehistory is how people in widely separated places suddenly and spontaneously developed the capacity for language at roughly the same time. It was as if people carried around in their heads a genetic alarm clock that suddenly went off all around the world...[...] No one has come up with a remotely plausible explanation of how a language spoken only in a remote corner of the Pyrenees could have come to influence Indian languages of the New World, but the links between many cognates are too numerous to explain in terms of simple coincidence".
So, the language God would have given at the tower of Babel wouldn’t have been English or Danish, but the proto-Germanic language or even earlier language from which it came. Now, what would that have looked like? And that means that God probably just divided the people building the tower of Babel by taking existing clans of people, and having them wake up one morning each speaking one of possibly 50 different languages. We don’t know the exact number.
So, everybody in your clan wakes up in the morning and nothing seems out of the ordinary. While everybody in your clan is eating breakfast, or milking the cows, they don’t know that anything has happened. But when they go off to work on the tower, they find different clans speaking different languages. God messed up the plan to build the tower and stay together building an empire.
Now let’s imagine what happened next. There was likely a great panic. Nobody understood what had happened. They didn’t understand why they weren’t being understood, or why they couldn’t understand others. It probably didn’t take them long to think that they had been touched by God somehow. The curses against sin, and the judgment of the flood would come to mind.
Now maybe those who were in charge continued having a common language. We know that Nimrod goes on to build other cities. We know that Babylon becomes an ancient city of renown. We know that the first world powers arose in this area of Mesopotamia. So, some people stayed. But, for those not in power, what would have been the inclination of most? Flee, get out of town. The heads of clans gather their language people and move.
And as they moved north, south, west and east, there would have been some competition for land, so there would be further spreading across the globe. And in the quest for a place of their own we know humanity even crossed the ice over the Bering Strait into what would become the Americas. And what did they take with them? They all took their creation stories, flood stories, idolatries, days of the dead and tower building memories. But now there were competing people groups, and eventually nations. They were separated by oceans, lands, languages, cultures, and physical differences. The remaining languages that we know today would be the result of separation and the natural changes that result in words as time goes on.
Which brings us to another question. In this scenario, how do we end up with all the skin colors and physical characteristics of different races?
So today we have these different “races.” Now, as I said before, there is only one race; Adam’s race. But we do know that people have different attributes. And so the world chose to classify those different attributes into what they called “races.” And especially in the days before intercontinental travel, those differences were very pronounced. There are differences in Skin color, Facial structure, Eye color, Hair color, and other physical characteristics.
Now, though we are all from Adam’s race, we do recognize that there are some significant physical differences between major groups of people in the world.
So where did all those come from since God only separated with language? In other words, speaking Mandarin would not turn your skin yellow. Speaking Swahili would not make it black. Well, I think there is a simple explanation for this that ties into what I said about the reduction of longevity.
Let’s go back to what may have been how it happened.
If God chose to give out 50 languages, and He divided them according to the existing clans or tribes, then the “Hays” clan may have been given the proto-germanic language. Now, as I said before, there were not likely as extreme of differences in physical characteristics. But there would have been genetic differences and some physical differences.
So, by God choosing to give a single language to an already existing clan of people you would have had an automatic limiting of the gene pool. The peoples would already be grouped in families. And we know something about families; they often look like each other.
Well, then since each of those 50 groups were now separated by language, most decide to move away and find a separate place for their clan. This begins the process of only mating within your own language group. And what we know about genetics is that the more you isolate one group from another, the more distinctive and dominant characteristics begin to manifest themselves. Now, I can’t say this for sure, but maybe there were only 6 original languages given by God. Then these groups separate, and we eventually get white, black, Latino, Asian, Pacific Islander, and American Indian. I only say that to illustrate what I am saying about how the physical characteristics of humanity could have become so distinctive.
It would have started with simple genetic isolation, and then further separation continued and suspicion and competition continued the separation leading to more genetic diversity.
I keep going back to dogs to illustrate this. But when we choose to seek pure breeds in dogs, we isolate specific characteristics that we desire. And in the end we get everything from chihuahuas to the great dane.
So far, we have addressed three doctrinal questions that come out of the story of the tower of Babel; Are we all one race? And what did people do with God’s good gifts? They followed their sinful, self-driven natures. And how does the world of men survive? By God’s grace of separating people.
That really leads us into the last doctrinal question that we get from the story of the tower of Babel.
I. Who controls the events of the world?
And the answer is that God is in control of the nations. From the start of Scripture, we see, and we are taught that God is in control, even of nations and kingdoms and rulers. Let me share with you some other Scripture passages.
Job 12:23 He makes the nations great, then makes them perish; He enlarges the nations, then leads them away.
Psalm 22:28 For the kingdom is Yahweh’s And He rules over the nations.
Psalm 33:10 Yahweh nullifies the counsel of the nations; He frustrates the thoughts of the peoples.
Psalm 44:2 You with Your own hand dispossessed the nations; Then You planted them; You afflicted the peoples, Then You cast them out.
Psalm 47:8 God reigns over the nations, God sits on His holy throne.
That is just a small sample of the Bible verses that state that truth. And we really get a strong sense of God’s control when we read Genesis 11.
8 So Yahweh scattered them from there over the face of the whole earth; and they stopped building the city. 9 Therefore its name was called [h]Babel, because there Yahweh confused the [i]language of the whole earth; and from there Yahweh scattered them over the face of the whole earth.
“The Lord scattered them.” We’ve described that already. “They stopped building the city.” That brings me to a question that is often asked. “Where is the Tower of Babel today?” Well, many people have stated that the tower and city were initially abandoned, but later completed by the people who remained in the region, and that the city was given the name Babylon. So, the ancient city of Babylon, whose ruins are in Iraq today, and the ruins of a ziggurat, or tower are in the city.
But others have stated that Babylon can not be the original site of the tower of Babel. A big part of their reasoning comes down to the study of the words Babel and Babylon, and geography. But regardless of where the original site was, if construction stopped and did not pick up again, it’s likely that whatever building that had been completed would have been scavenged over time for other building projects. The original site of the tower and city are likely lost. That would be a fitting end to an ungodly enterprise.
And it would further accentuate the truth that we learn from this story; that God is in control, even in control of nations.
And that truth can either be frightening or comforting to us. It should be frightening if we live our lives in opposition to God. If we, like Nimrod, decide that we will choose our own destiny, we will elevate ourselves, we will build a kingdom of our own, and we shout at the heavens, “in your face God.”
But it is comforting to those of us who put our faith in God.
I have often referred to Romans 8:28.Romans 8:28 And we know that for those who love God [a]all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose.
It doesn’t say that all things in the life of a believer are good, but that they work together for good. He mixes even the harsh, difficult, and grievous ingredients of life, and uses them to make good for those that are His. Let me share with you a couple of other verse.Ecclesiastes 8:12 Although a sinner does evil a hundred times and may prolong his life, still I know that it will be well for those who fear God, who fear [a]Him openly.Isaiah 3:10 Say to the righteous that it will go well with them, For they will eat the fruit of their deeds.
Jeremiah 29:11 11 For I know the plans that I [a]have for you,’ declares Yahweh, ‘plans for peace and not for calamity, to give you a future and a hope.