The Tower of Babel: Unity in Disobedience

“Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As men 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 tar 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 and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.” But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. 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. Come, 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.” Genesis 11:1-9

“Whatever disunites man from God also disunites man from man.” ~~ Edmund Burke

In Genesis 11, we get an inside look at how the various languages, families and nations on earth ended up being divided and scattered. To put it bluntly, the Tower of Babel is the true story of people attempting to “make a name for [themselves].” It is a lesson from history that we can learn from today! Pride against man and against God will scatter us.

Earlier in Genesis 9, God had said to Noah and his sons, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth.” Though Noah’s descendants did spread out as God had said, at some point they stopped “filling the earth” and instead settled in one place. They knew what they had to do. Perhaps they decided to stop trying to understand God’s plan and began making up their own. They stopped obeying God’s direction and became rebellious! Their decision to “settle down” was in direct defiance of God! They started building a tower that would “[reach] to the heavens.” How worthless of an attempt was that? How does this relate to us?
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