Tower of Babel. Group entitlement falls over.

By mmayer

Genesis 11:1-9

Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.

They said to each other, ‘Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.’ They used brick instead of stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.’

But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. ⁶The Lord said, ‘If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. ⁷Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.’

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.

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In Genesis 11, when everyone still spoke a common language, we hear of a people who wanted to be secure and stay together, by building a city featuring a tower up to the heavens. We have been calling the ‘Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil’ that Adam and Eve ate from the ‘Tree of Entitlement’. These people together wanted to be ‘like God’, except without God. The God plan was for people to fill the earth (Gen 1:28), but these just clumped together for safety. There was a sense of group entitlement. That is always the danger for any nation, group or church who are determined to be right all the time, and that think their way is the only way.

Well, the God who had to come down to actually view what they thought was so high is not a God of uniformity at all costs. Even within God there is diversity. “Let us confuse their language…’, and so the tower-to-heaven project was never completed.

The confusion of languages was reversed on the day of Pentecost, when pilgrims in Jerusalem heard the disciples tell about Christ in their own languages. There is a wonderful joy in working together on big projects, and being part of something that is successful. There is also the servant heart of Christ, which leads us, in our diverse ways, to support and help each other, in the little ways that others never see. Both the big and the little are vital in God’s way of doing things.