The destiny of human civilizations is to become collectively shaped into the likeness of God, a harmonious unity connected together in an increasingly rich and beautiful diversity. This is God’s BIG vision for the nations. This unity in diversity is the essence of the Trinity (God in ONE and Three), the foundation and model for thriving human community.
For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.
Habakkuk 2:14
And this is the plan: At the right time he will bring everything together under the authority of Christ—everything in heaven and on earth.
Ephesians 1:10
After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands.
Revelation 7:9
This is the story and arc of scripture and all of history–God making and filling all things into his likeness. The struggle in the forward march of history is for humanity to discover, to progressively step into God’s likeness. This is not easy. The temptation is instead to have a unity at the expense of diversity (totalitarianism, collectivism) or a diversity at the expense of unity (individualism, anarchism). The story of the Tower of Babel is about God’s dramatic corrective of the biggest temptation of these polar enticements: collective or coerced uniformity. It is about bringing the the wayward post-Flood population back from an imposed control to its mandated call to “fill the earth” in what is to become a rich multiplicity of families and nations.
In this article we will see what the real evil is in the building of Babel and the need for a corrective judgement from God to protect human freedom.
The Story
1Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2 As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. 3 They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 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.” 5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. 6 The 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. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.” 8 So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 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 11:1-9
To go more deeply into what this story is, it may help to remove from our minds what it is not. It is not about a human attempt to storm the heavens and displace God, and God stomping out their efforts. Nor is it mainly there to explain the origins of human languages, though it does do this. (The diversity of languages is about something bigger.) This account is about something more central: the importance of human freedom and diversity and interrupting the temptations to stop it with oppressively controlling systems.
Avoiding Coerced Control
What is the justification for this understanding of the story? God had made it clear that the divine vision is for humanity to spread out and fill the earth. To the original parents, God spoke:
Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.
Genesis 1:28
To Noah and his sons the same directive was reaffirmed:
Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.
Genesis 9:1
As a large and significant population inhabited the plain of Shinar (southern Babylonia/Iraq), an unnamed group wanted to stay settled in one place. The motivation is to resist the call and blessing of God for people to journey throughout the earth. They propose building a city and a tower “so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.” (Genesis 11:4).
Why were they resisting the command of God to fill the earth? Verse 1 states that the “whole world had one language and a common speech.” Since everyone spoke “one language” with one “common speech,” the implication is that they wanted everyone to stay in an enforced uniformity. That everyone had one language was not a problem; rather, there was a resistance to let people explore different paths of freedom to “fill the earth.” Without an outside measure to enforce diversity, the temptation would be toward an imposed control. God was not distressed by what they said, but by an imposed sameness.
Along this line, perhaps this building project was to make Babel the capital of the world with the tower to monitor residents and keep them in line. Rabbi Naftali Berlin makes this case, “It is inconceivable that there would be only one city in the whole world. Rather, they thought that all cities would be connected and subsidiary to that one city in which the tower was to be built.” Rabbi Shai Held remarks:
“In this kind of world If everyone says the same words and thinks the same thoughts, then a society emerges in which there is no room for individual tastes, thoughts, and aspirations or for individual projects and creativity. All difference is (coercively) erased…Strikingly, no names are mentioned in the story of Babel—there are no names because there are no individuals.”
Allowing Freedom and Flourishing
As Rabbi Shai observe, a striking feature that makes the Babel story stand out is that there are no names which is in sharp contrast to the marathon of names in Genesis 10:1-32 and Genesis 11:11-32, on either end of the story. For example, in Genesis 10 we encounter the genealogy of Noah’s son: Ham, Shem and Japheth and their rapid repopulation of the earth where cultural and language diversity is being achieved. Referring to the sons of Javan, who descend from Japheth, a parenthetical note is provided:
(From these the maritime peoples spread out into their territories by their clans within their nations, each with its own language.)
Genesis 10:5
Referring to the sons of Ham, the writer summarizes his description:
These are the sons of Ham by their clans and languages, in their territories and nations
Genesis 10:20
Then, for the sons of Shem:
These are the sons of Shem by their clans and languages, in their territories and nations.
Genesis 10:31
Compared with what follows in Genesis 11:1-9, chapter 10 is like an ode to diversity, which is unmistakably part of the divine plan.
Notice further that after the report of events with the Tower of Babel, the following verses (11:10-32) recount the specific lineage of Shem to Abraham (Father of the Jewish people) and concludes near the end of the chapter:
Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, the wife of his son Abram, and together they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan.
Genesis 11:31
This progress of the report streams into the lineage of Shem to Abraham and his journey to Canaan (later Israel) from where the Messiah (Jesus) will be born. The implication of this event is that if God would not have confused the languages, the lineage of Shem would not have established itself in Canaan with Abraham and the Jewish nation and the Messiah (Jesus Christ) would not have been born.
God confuses their speech (v.7), so that one person will not understand the language of the other.’ Such a punishment perfectly fits the crime; after all, a totalitarian state, unites in order to establish a collective name for itself (v.4), which depersonalizes human beings for the machine. It has neither the energy nor the motivation to understand or internalize the individual needs of people. So, God stops this project in its tracks before it does damage to the growing movement of human flourishing, and more specifically the establishing of what will ultimately be the Jewish people, which is the key story line in Genesis 12-50.
1 The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.
2 “I will make you into a great nation,
Genesis 12:1-3
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.[a]
3 I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you.
Conclusion
God has been moving in the midst of our broken and rebellious world, to conform all things to be like himself which is a harmonious unity within a vast diversity: the proper and functioning balance of society (state, community, family and individual). This is learned through the collective experience and wisdom of the ages, one interaction and one event and one era at a time. This is the goal and destiny of all human flourishing and civilization building. It is in fact the grand narrative or story of the Bible–an interdependent unity that encompasses the multifaceted creative diversity.
The biblical vision is that every nation and person has a special and unique role to play in the unfolding of human history, and each one is called to forge their role and identity in relation to God. As Paul declares:
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.
Acts 17:26-27
Story of Grace 