Genesis 11:1-4
As Noah's family began to populate the land, they were of one speech, one language. At this point in the bible we are only a few generations from Noah. The population journeyed from the east and they ended up settling in the land of Shinar. In spite of the instruction to populate the whole earth, they congregated and decided to build a great city and tower. This is in rebellion against God's command to spread out over the earth (Genesis 9:1). Using baked bricks and asphalt for mortar, these men built a tower. This type of construction was common in Babylon, or the land of Shinar. Why build a tower? It was to make a name for themselves, it was for their fame and renown. These people did not trust God or His promise, they trusted only in themselves, in mankind.
In those days, the central part of a city would have been the temple. In fact, the temple itself in many cases was the city. The Ziggurat's were built for the gods to come down. There was nothing in the structure, no openings or passages, it was just a monument. On top was a single room with a bed, chair, table and food that was put on the table regularly. This was to refresh the god as he made his descent. This tower though didn't seem to be for a god, but to honor man. Some believe it was Nimrod who had the tower built to honor him. What we do know is there is no faith in the statement, "let us build ourselves". They were building a tower of their own will, to honor mankind. Up to this point in the bible, the only previous thought of making a name or being of renown was that of the Nephilim and their affect on the pre-flood culture. The tower builders were driven by the same base desire for a name, renown as the Nephilim, men of renown, heroes of old (6:4). God said to be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth after the flood; but they said, let's gather together so we don't end up scattered over the whole earth.
It is the fear of anonymity that drives men to make a name, seek fame. Yet, stepping out of the crowd goes against our nature. It's as though we want to stay in the crowd and all just be famous together, make a name together. To step out as an individual has individual responsibilities and consequences. The idol becomes unity and uniformity as we all seek to make a name together. We see this play out in fads and fashions. A few rebel against the norm, others follow, to be rebels also and conform to the rebellion. When everyone rebels to conform to the rebellion it becomes the norm and not a rebellion at all.
To follow a tyrant, or group of them, to make a name, the individual's convictions, free expression and personality could only be allowed within the confines of uniformity. This is the first introduction of conformity to an atheistic, godless world system. The self-proclaimed leader of this expression sets the standards of conformity. This opens the door for tyrants and oppressors. We see the same conformity to ideals today, all done in the name of social justice, financial equality or compassion; yet, behind the scenes we find the corrupt tyrants oppressing the people and holding, having and living out a more affluent standard for themselves.
Genesis 11:5-7
The people opposed God; they may have thought, 'What can he do to us if we all stick together?' This was a massive undertaking and took leaders, engineers and designers. It took commitment and time. Someone, or a group of people, had an agenda they were able to sell the masses who would do the work. Ironically, they were building a tower to the heavens which caused the Lord of all heaven and earth to come down to them. It is anthropomorphic language when the 'the Lord came down to see'. The omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent Lord knew what they were up to.
The people acted as one people, single minded in their focus. However, this single mindedness was not the mind of Christ.
Therefore if there is any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and mercy, 2 fulfill my joy by being like-minded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind. 3 Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself. 4 Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others.
5 Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus (Philippians 2:1-5)
The single mindedness of a group of people began to look like the pre-flood condition where "Every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time" (Gen 6:5). We know the thought of putting our heads together, having a team effort and a single-minded commitment to a goal. However, imagine if this goal is evil. This is the inclination of the human heart, humanism. Left to their ways with no restraining force, there is no evil the people won't pursue when they are unified in this way. There was no moral compass, controlling set of values, no guiding truth or truths – nothing to keep them in check, because they see no authority or power higher than their own wants, needs or desires. They would build up a delusion of self-sufficiency in a false religion, corporate security and political unity.
Man was still the image bearers, God's creation. God wasn't watching from heaven wringing His hands wondering what He would do if they banded together. Far from it. However, He would not watch them destroy themselves with unhealthy attitudes and actions. God speaks, either to the Trinity, or His divine council, or both, "Let Us go down" and confuse the language. By so doing, natural divisions would occur. When the people came to the plane of Shinar they all spoke one language. What language was that? Some suggest that Hebrew was the original language and the descendants of Eber would hold onto it. We don't know, but it makes sense that God's people hold onto the original language.
Genesis 11:7-9
The construction project of the tower became chaotic. No one could understand each other. With the breakdown of communication, the unity was gone. The natural response to a situation like this was the grouping together of the people who understood each other. Everyone else seemed to be babblers!
The only time this is truly undone is in Acts 2 by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit descended on the multitude and they praised God in one language. Each person understood the others even though they all spoke other languages. They knew the speakers were Galileans, but they heard their own language. There were sixteen nations listed as present at Pentecost that day. If you marked these nations on the map, you would overlay the 3 regions settled by Shem, Ham and Japheth and the 70 nations. When the Holy Spirit brings His people together in the language of the kingdom, He speaks to us with a single mind, the mind of Christ. With this mind we desire to share the good news to all of mankind and there truly are no boundaries.
God confused the language to cause mankind to scatter out on the earth. Then sin came to bear its ugly spirit on this Godly effort. The unfortunate outfall of the many nations is the hatred between nations, the elitism and racism between cultures and peoples. This is because mankind has lost sight of the fact that we from one ancestry and that there is one God. From all the nations, we are one people, red, yellow, black and white. Paul summed it up nicely in Acts 17:24-28 as he spoke to the men of Athens from the Areopagus.
24 "The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 'For in him we live and move and have our being.' r As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring.'
The restraining force of God kept the nations separated by language and culture over the years. This was God putting mankind in the position of fulfilling Genesis 9:1 to 'Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth'. It is fascinating that with the technology today, we see the nations overcome the language barrier. Besides the fact that so much of the world seems to speak English, but also phone apps translate speech instantly as does the internet. Language is no longer a barrier and only a mild inconvenience. Are we seeing the restraining force of God begin to lift His hand? I don't think anyone would deny there is a globalists agenda. It appears to be one of social justice, compassion and safety (Peace and Safety!!). They make the case that in the current state of the world we no longer have a choice, we must join together and be a single people. If we do so, there is nothing we can't do. Maybe it is true that if mankind would band together, we would stop killing each other. But if they come together with any other agenda than to glorify God, then it will result in corruption, tyranny and oppression by the small group of folks in power. We see it today, a small group of globalists who will tell us what we should feel, do, how, act, etc. It is the perfect setting for the rise of the anti-christ; the peace and safety is the calm before the perfect storm.
Most of civilization has gone 'the way of Cain'. It was humanistic, life on man's terms, attempt to live a life given by God, without Him. This drive to make a name, to be of renown only resulted in being associated with 'Babel'; a divine joke that was on them. The meaning of Babel was originally 'Gate of god' to them but came to be known as a place of confusion. They were famous for the wicked at attempt resulting in confusion. They are a famous example of puny man thinking they can stand up to Almighty God. They are the clay telling the potter what they will do.
Genesis 11:10-11
The nations were formed at the scattering of the offspring of Shem, Ham and Japheth. From the tower of babel, the dark hearts of wickedness and rebellion moved west to conquer lands, build cities, set up their idolatry and carry their sinful ways across the earth. In spite of that, God's promise remained true and intact. It was from Shem's descendants hope would be found.
We pick up on the genealogy again, right where we left off in chapter 10. It's as if, at the end of chapter 10 someone asked, 'Why did they spread out over the earth?'. Then in chapter 11 we are shown how and why this occurred with the tower of Babel story. It is clear then that the Lord scattered the over the earth by confusing the languages. They would not obey him and spread out on their own to populate the earth, so He spread them out.
Genesis 11:12-26
Peleg is mentioned back in chapter 10 in the table of nations. His descendants aren't talked about in chapter 10, but his brother Joktan had sons and it talked about them. The purpose of chapter 10 was to show the scattering of people whose names are linked to geographical places. These are the nations. In chapter 11, Moses is using the genealogies to make the connection from Noah to Father Abraham. Peleg and Joktan are midpoint of the 10 names and it is here a contrast is created between the two:
Kenneth Mathews put it this way, "This highlights the difference in the two inner branches of the Shemite family—one leading to disgrace and the other to grace.
These ancestries were important to the Jews; each knew their lineage having learned it as a child, connecting their life to father Abraham.
We often scan the genealogies and don't give them much thought. However, we should note that 'and then he died' is gone from the narrative. It's a fascinating omission after the previous repeating model. The genealogy of Adam to Noah repeated the refrain 'and then he died' all the way through, showing an advancing darkness and approach of death. In chapter 11 we find the genealogies moving away from death toward the promise and toward hope.
It's also worth noticing that declining lifespan. Shem lived 500 years; seven generations later the lifespans are in the 120 range.
Genesis 11:27-30
The genealogies have followed a pattern of ten names between noteworthy figures.
- Adam to Noah
- Noah to Abram
- This paragraph then includes 8 names causing us to look ahead to see that Ishmael is the ninth and Isaac, the son of promise, the 10th.
This foreshadowing of the son of promise seems to be the focal point of this adventure of Abram's life. The barrenness of Sarai adds drama to the narrative. The family of Shem came out of the area of Babel on the plain of Shinar.
Ur was between Babylon and the Persian Gulf on the bank of the Euphrates. There is quite a bit of archeological evidence of the ancient city of Ur. This city was built around a massive, three-staged ziggurat built by Ur-Nammu during the beginning of the second millennium b.c. It appears Terah raised his family as moon worshipers as they were residing at the center of this pagan religion. Each stage of the three-staged ziggurat was colored distinctively; the top level had a silver one-roomed shrine to Nanna, the moon-god. Discovered at the royal cemetery were the remains of ritual burials of over 2000 human sacrifices. These discoveries came from the work of a Sir Leonard Woolley in the 1920's and 1930's. When the cemetery was discovered, they also discovered a cache of golden objects. As this made the news it captured the attention of a writer, Agatha Christie. Agatha married Woolley's assistant and in 1936 wrote a mystery Murder in Mesopotamia set in an excavation in Iraq.
Additional notes:
Leonard Woolley saw with the eye of imagination: the place was as real to him as it had been in 1500 B.C., or a few thousand years earlier. Wherever he happened to be, he could make it come alive. While he was speaking I felt in my mind no doubt whatever that the house on the corner had been Abraham's. It was his reconstruction of the past and he believed in it, and anyone who listened to him believed in it also.
The Royal Tombs at Ur have been long famous for their chilling scenario of young soldiers and courtesans who loyally took poison to die with their mistress. The authors investigate two of the original skulls with CT scans and propose a procedure no less chilling, but more enforceable. The victims were participants in an elaborate funerary ritual during which they were felled with a sharp instrument, heated, embalmed with mercury, dressed and laid ceremonially in rows. (Cambridge University Press)
The introduction of massive death pits at Ur is usually associated to Meskalamdug, one of the kings of Ur that was also known as the paramount ruler of all the Sumerians. He started the practice of such a massive entombment with the sacrifice of soldiers and an entire choir of women to accompany him in the afterlife.[4]
I have to wonder if Abram climbed that temple, if he worshiped this moon god and if he witnessed the incredible horror of human sacrifice. I wonder, if from the top of the ziggurat, he may have looked up at the stars and wondered if there was something he was missing.
Terah had 3 sons: Abram, Nahor and Haran. Haran had a son, Lot and then died. Nahor took Milcah, his neice for his wife. Abram (meaning "Father") takes Sarai (meaning "contentious") as his wife. She had no child. The one called father, wasn't. This was a big deal in that culture.
Genesis 11:31-32
Abram's story begins in Ur of the Chaldeans but quickly moves on. Terah took Abram, Sarai and Lot and pulled up stakes from Ur and headed toward Canaan. Yet when they arrived at Haran, they settled there. The call to go to Canaan was for Abram alone. It was there that Terah died at 205 years old.
Many years later, when Joshua would take the Promised land he told us little about Abram when he was talking to all of Israel at Shechem (Joshua 24:2) said that God said;
'Your fathers, including Terah, the father of Abraham and the father of Nahor, dwelt on the other side of the River in old times; and they served other gods. 3 Then I took your father Abraham from the other side of the River, led him throughout all the land of Canaan,
Stephen also gave us a little information about Abraham while he was giving the Jewish council a history lesson in Acts. Stephen said in Acts 7:2;
The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Haran, 3 and said to him, 'Get out of your country and from your relatives, and come to a land that I will show you.' 4 Then he came out of the land of the Chaldeans and dwelt in Haran. And from there, when his father was dead, He moved him to this land in which you now dwell.
Between these 2 reports on Abram, we find out that Terah, Abram's father served other gods.
This is really no surprise considering all the foreign gods and idols that were everywhere in that land. God said to Abram to get out of the country and away from his relatives. Abram wasn't totally obedient. He did leave the country, but he took his father with him.
Abram went to Haran until his father Terah died. It's interesting to note that Terah means delay, another source said delay to investigate the smell. Haran means parched and barren. It seems Abram was delayed in being obedient to his call from God. In his delay we find faithfulness to his father, his family duty, which seemed to equate to disobedience. He was dwelling in a parched and barren land. We find this strangely provides a connection to all our lives. We can all think of times that we acted in disobedience and found our selves in a place we knew we weren't suppose to be. The promises the Lord made were good, but they would be delayed until we obey. Our disobedience is the delay, we punish ourselves as we attempt to find our way in a parched and barren land.
Ur was a spiritually dark place. Which also makes it a perfect place from which to hear God's call. The contrast must have been profound. The sense of light, relief, life, hope and so much more must have shone brightly to him in the dark setting. Abram saw the glory of God, maybe not visually, but certainly spiritually. He heard the call to depart and go to a land that God would show him. His obedience to this call was a monumental act of faith. For him to 'go' became outward evidence of inward faith. It was leave country, leave your people, leave your home and your family. Calvin called this the 'naked word of God'; it was God saying in effect:
"I command you to go forth with closed eyes, and forbid you to inquire where I am about to lead you, until, having renounced your country, you shall have given yourself wholly to me."
Yet, Abraham was an unbeliever, knowing little or nothing of Yahweh. He was no young man, established, prosperous and likely set in his ways. Of all the people, over all of time, he was the only one who heard God's word. After hearing alone, he risked everything to follow God. I've not even come close to such a thing, nor have most, if not all, of you. If we imagine that we have, we either don't fully understand or are deceiving our self.
Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. 2 This is what the ancients were commended for. (Hebrews 11:1)
Biblical faith is bound to certainty, the assurance of things hoped for. This is future promised by our Lord for those found in Him. Biblical faith is a conviction bound to an invisible certainty, something we can't even see, yet know to be reality. This is the reality that guides our life.
Philo of Alexander was a Jewish Philosopher around the time of Christ. He wrote:
Do you not see in the case of Abraham that, "when he had left his country, and his kindred, and his father's house," that is to say, the body, the outward senses, and reason, he then began to become acquainted with the powers of the living God? for when he had secretly departed from all his house, the law says that, "God appeared unto him,"50 showing that he is seen clearly by him who has put off mortal things, and who has taken refuge from this body in the incorporeal soul;[1]
Hebrews 11:8-10 says:
8 By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to the place which he would receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. 9 By faith he dwelt in the land of promise as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise; 10 for he waited for the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.
The call of Abraham to forsake your country, people, home and your family is very much like the call of the gospel. Jesus said:
He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. 38 And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. 39 He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it. (Matthew 1-:37-39)
This is a call to trust in Christ alone. Period! In this trust we find ourselves as citizens of the very city Abraham sought. This city is the kingdom of God, the city with foundations, whose builder and maker is God.
©2019 Doug Ford
[1] Yonge, C. D. with Philo of Alexandria. (1995). The works of Philo: complete and unabridged (p. 129). Peabody, MA: Hendrickson.
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