Genesis 11:1-9

Welcome back to our Thursday study end of the week as we turn to chapter 11.
We’re going to skip some genealogies today.
Is that right, Clint?
Yeah.
You could certainly read through chapter 10 if you’d like.
It’d be a lot of names you didn’t recognize and a few things you would recognize,
not any of which has a great bearing on the direction of the book,
though you may want to spend
some time with it.
It’s not devotional reading, it’s informational reading.
And then as we get to chapter 11 today,
we really close our first section of Genesis.
The rest of the book is kind of going to be
roughly grouped in stories about particular
individuals following a certain family for the most part.
But this first part,
sometimes called the prehistory,
is all of the kind of the creation,
the flood story, today the Bible story.
And we bring that to a close today and next week we’ll move into the beginning of the
Abraham stories, that narrative where we really focus in on very particular individuals and
families.
But here we still, we end Genesis,
this prehistory part of Genesis with a kind of meta story,
a world story.
And so I’ll just read it here and then we talk about it.
The whole earth in one language,
the same words,
and as they migrated from the east,
they came upon the plain in the land of Shiner and they settled there.
And they said to one another,
“Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly.”
And they had brick for stone and bitumen for mortar.
And they said, “Let’s build a city and a tower with its top in the heavens and make
a name for ourselves,
otherwise we could be scattered abroad upon the face of the earth.”
And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which mortals had built.
And the Lord said,
“Look, they’re one people.
They have all one language and this is only the beginning of what they could do.
Nothing that they propose to do will be impossible for them.
Let’s go down and confuse their language so that they will not understand each other’s
speech.” So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of the earth and left the building of the city.
And they left the building of the city,
therefore it was called Babel because there the Lord
confused the languages of the earth and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over
the face of the earth.
So this is one of those transitional stories.
It’s a cultural story at its simplest level.
It explains how people got
all over and why they speak different languages.
In some ways this story almost drops in in front of the genealogies of chapter 10.
It’s really not related to other parts of the story.
This story kind of stands on its own.
There’s no characters named.
It also harkens back to Genesis a little bit,
that idea when God kicks Adam and Eve out
of the garden that they could understand something and sort of be in competition or be in opposition
to God, and we have that sense here.
But also at another level,
this is the undoing.
God has said, “Be fruitful and multiply and go out on the earth.”
And the people instead have congregated in one place trying to serve themselves,
make a name for themselves,
and this idea of
going to the heavens,
of sort of finding equality
with God.
And so as a response,
God scatters them and confuses them,
which in the story functions relationally,
but in the narrative of big explanation stories,
it also explains how
people scatter and why we can’t always understand what they say in another country.
Yeah, we’ll talk a little bit about how this story has extra import beyond Genesis before
we end here today.
But I just want to point out here within this story that this is actually one of the
more confusing stories whenever I come into it with younger students, younger Christians.
A lot of them end up with the question,
“What does God have against skyscrapers?”
Right?
I mean, like, ultimately, they’re building a building.
And
let’s be very clear here,
God’s not upset that humans figured out engineering.
It’s not because they’re trying to build a structure that’s too high,
and anything over 100 feet tall is too much, right?
What this is about is this idea that they want to build themselves a city,
that they want its top to be in the heavens,
which is, like you said, Clint,
that is the domain of
God.
But then critically here,
this is verse 4,
to make a name for ourselves.
And what’s striking about an inclusion like this,
making a name for ourself, is that fundamentally
having a name given is one of the core roles that God has throughout the Scriptures.
Over and over again,
we have characters who encounter God,
and God will give them a new
name.
Chiefly, we’re going to discover this with the character who is going to begin this next
section of Genesis when we’re together next week.
When we look at Abram,
who becomes Abraham,
God gives him a new name.
He becomes a person who’s named again.
And we see that in this narrative,
the people don’t want to submit to God’s naming.
They don’t want to submit to God’s ordering.
They want to make a name for themselves.
And this is a restatement of what we’ve seen multiple times now,
humanity taking upon itself,
not only the goal,
but the purpose of trying to achieve something beyond the created order,
trying to grab something that doesn’t belong to being human.
And because of that,
God is going to disperse them.
And what I think is economical about this text,
I’ll just say, this is a little bit
of a rewording of what you said earlier, Clint.
What I find beautiful about texts like this is it functions in multiple ways and multiple
purposes with so much simplicity.
Because on one hand,
this is repeating themes of previous Genesis stories.
And post-flood,
it’s reminding us that sin exists,
while also masterfully doing exactly what you described,
explaining for us why there’s so many tongues in the world.
Why is it hard to understand people from other regions?
Well, here, this is the Genesis story that explains that.
So on multiple levels, this is intertwining,
and it carries multiple meanings simultaneously.
I don’t think they contradict each other.
I think they’re all there on purpose.
And that’s what makes this story,
I think, so compelling,
not only because the other
scriptural writers also find it compelling down the road also.
I want to be careful with this word.
So hear me.
Please, please hear this as I hope I explain it.
This is a story that has some kind of mythical elements.
There is some kind of
mythical moments in these first 12 chapters of Genesis.
And I think here we see one.
There’s this sort of adversarial nature of God and people.
They’re trying to do something to get even with God.
And God is saying,
“We can’t let them just do whatever they want.
We have to slow them down.”
And I think, Michael, you’ve maybe traveled some of those circles more than I have,
but I think even people who would argue that the Scripture is word-for-word, literal, true,
would maybe struggle with this story a little.
I mean, this is clearly kind of metaphorical.
This is told in such a way that it’s very hard to read it as history.
It’s this sense that people are making progress,
and in the midst of that progress,
they begin to develop a kind of competition with God who then works to subvert their obsession with self
and their quest for notoriety.
And God has to work against the human ego.
And all of that also,
coincidentally, from a historical perspective,
sets the stage for
how it is that we then can focus on Abraham,
a very certain person in the midst of a very
certain race of people,
group of people, who speak a language and live in a place and have
their roots in the beginning of his story.
And I think this is an interesting story.
It’s very much a transitional story.
It’s not a story that is fundamentally crucial to the text of Genesis,
but interestingly enough—and you alluded to this,
Michael—this becomes a significant story in our understanding
of part of the nature of the work of Jesus in the New Testament,
especially in the book
of Acts.
Yeah, so maybe we just turn there quickly,
turn our attention there.
So you might recognize that in Acts 2,
with the coming of the Holy Spirit,
what we call Pentecost,
we have this moment where suddenly those who speak different languages can suddenly understand one another.
Now, we need to be very clear.
If you read Acts closely,
it’s not that they were all speaking the same language.
It’s not that suddenly they all spoke Latin or—you’re right—it’s that they understood
each other in their own language.
And what you see in that is a direct returning to this idea of Babel,
where people are purposely
trying to build a tower into the heavens.
Here the heavens come to earth.
The Holy Spirit has come and taken up residence within those who are believers.
And then in that act and moment,
then suddenly this language barrier,
which was created here
all the way back in Genesis 11,
becomes transcended.
In many ways, it’s not even reversed.
The languages still exist.
Those physical barriers are still a reality,
yet by the power of the Spirit,
humans are able to understand one another in that moment.
So the point of pausing and reflecting here isn’t so much—though I think Acts 2 is
a masterful and, you know, it’s a shaping text in the New Testament,
understanding of who we are as followers of Jesus Christ—the point of sharing this is to say that this
story—and not all Old Testament stories are drawn quite like this story is into that
early church narrative.
This idea that all the way—reaching back all the way to this prehistory of Genesis,
we see the work of the Holy Spirit after Jesus Christ enabling and enliving the church to
live into a different reality.
And that different reality is directly contrasted to this reality.
And I think that makes this story really special.
It makes it really interesting that the earliest Christians were not only aware of this,
but they in some ways defined themselves as the step beyond this by the work of the Holy
Spirit.
And I find that really interesting.
Right.
I think some people even refer to the Acts 2 story as the Pentecost story as “Babble
Reversed,” and reversed not in the sense that it undoes the language piece,
but that idea that what was separate from one another, that the barriers
between people have been
erased in Christ, that we meet at the cross and we discover our oneness again that has
been forfeited, lost to us through the various ways that we separate from one another.
And there is a sense in which I think this story adds a tremendous amount of depth and
nuance to that story.
So for what it’s worth,
that’s the Tower of Babel.
It’s an interesting story.
It’s an old story, an ancient story,
a kind of funny story almost.
The Bible doesn’t really do what we would call humor very often,
but there is a sense
in which this is almost a little bit of comedic relief here.
And then from this story,
if you read, and we probably won’t do this,
but throughout the rest of chapter 11,
we go down through the lineage of Shem again,
the favored son, the blessed son,
and we get to this name Abram.
And Abram is going to be the significant character with which the rest of the story,
the rest of the book of Genesis begins and on whom the rest of the book of Genesis rests,
really.
And we will be looking at that Monday as we move into the 12th chapter.
Yeah, my only comment here as we come towards conclusion
this Thursday afternoon is,
I want to just quick point out,
I’ve got highlight in purple here.
This is verse 6.
This is God speaking.
Look, they’re one people,
they all have one language,
and this is only the beginning of
what they’ll do.
Nothing that they propose to do will be impossible for them.
I find this an interesting word here in the text because,
especially if you’re in the Reformed tradition,
but I think as a general reading of the Old Testament,
when it’s God versus human,
God wins every time.
And it’s not even a question or a contest.
It’s not as if,
you know, maybe they’ll inch it out in the end.
No, I mean, when God is speaking here,
I think maybe our frame bends us to misunderstand
this.
Let me explain it this way.
So I have two daughters.
Both of them complain semi-frequently that they don’t have enough privileges.
They would love to be able to eat as much ice cream as they want and go to bed at whatever
time they want because they don’t find their mother and my opinion
on that to be very helpful.
Well, the point that we try to make over and over and over again is it’s not that we’re
trying to keep freedom from you for freedom’s sake,
but rather we’re trying to teach you
the pattern by which your life will be best lived.
And I think that’s a helpful frame for what God’s saying here.
That is, if you let humanity go unimpeded,
that what ends up at the end is not harmony
and peace and constructive care,
but a reality of that sinfulness that has existed,
humanity tends to go off the rails.
And in this pursuit of self,
we tend to run other people over and we do harm to others.
And so here I think that this is sometimes read negatively,
to be honest, like the idea that God is somehow–
Worried, afraid.
Yeah, that God is being put off here by humans and he wants to keep the upper hand.
Listen, God doesn’t need any help with the upper hand.
God has the upper hand.
This is fundamentally for humanity’s good.
We sometimes don’t see it that way because we would like to have the freedom and ability
to do whatever we want to do.
But from an eternal sovereign God perspective,
what’s best for us is sometimes boundaries
and restrictions.
And we’re going to see that codified in the law,
but we already see that being teased
out in a story like this one, I think.
So yeah, just a reflection on that.
I don’t think that this is a negative.
I think in some ways this is God doing a positive thing.
Though to us, it may seem unfair.
It may seem negative.
I think that’s an interesting way to read this story,
Michael.
If you think back to the flood narrative,
the problem was people were evil.
They were inclined toward evil in their heart all the time,
their every action.
Here the problem is they’re inclined towards self.
They’re trying to replace God.
Essentially, they’re trying to compete.
They’re trying to make themselves a divine presence,
a notoriety,
and an accomplishment.
And so in this case,
it’s not that humans are necessarily sinning.
It’s that their arrogance has led them to essentially seek to be their own source of
authority, their own source of dependence.
And so what happens?
They become scattered.
They become individuals.
They become other because God is not going to allow them to foster the illusion that
they can be divine on their own,
that they don’t need something else.
And so,
yeah, I think that’s an interesting way to look at the text.
Well, friends, we hope that there’s something in that for you.
We are certainly glad that you would join us for this study.
And I’m excited for what’s going to come next.
This is a really big transition that’s about to come.
So if you know of someone who’s not been studying with us,
the call of Abram would be a perfect
time to begin this study with us because there’s a really substantial transfer about to happen
in the story.
Yeah, Genesis is interesting in that we get these stories that we all know that seem like
they’re the point of the book,
but really, they kind of set the stage for the point of
the book.
And we’ll get into that next week.
So that’s all said.
Have a great weekend, everybody.
See you soon.
See you guys.