Genesis 10:32–11:9 (LEB)
32These are the families of the sons of Noah, according to their generations and in their nations. And from these the nations spread abroad on the earth after the flood.
1Now the whole earth had one language and the same words.
2And as people migrated from the east they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.
3And they said to each other, “Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone and they had tar for mortar.
4And they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower whose top reaches to the heavens. And let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”
5Then Yahweh came down to see the city and the tower that humankind was building.
6And Yahweh said, “Behold, they are one people with one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. So now nothing that they intend to do will be impossible for them.
7Come, let us go down and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand each other’s language.”
8So Yahweh scattered them from there over the face of the whole earth, and they stopped building the city.
9Therefore its name was called Babel, for there Yahweh confused the language of the whole earth, and there Yahweh scattered them over the face of the whole earth.Observations
- Geography is becoming a big deal
- Adam and Eve are cast out east of the garden
- Cain wanders east
- God brings the people through Noah back west from the flood
- Babel is built farther in the east
- What does the geography mean?
- Evil is on the move and starting to get organised
- Starts with 2 people, escalates to murder, then more murder and cities, and finally Babel
- NBLH are the Hebrew consonants that are repeated over and over in this story, halfway through they switch to HLBN indicating another chiasm centered around verse 11:4, regarding humanity being scattered around the whole earth
- 10:32 parallels 11:8-9 are the bookend
- It' nearly impossible to see in English
- More chiasms
- Parallels
- Noah paralleled Creation
- Noah and the curse parallels Adam and Eve
- We should expect this to parallel Cain an Able
- The cherubim guarding the tree of life may show, base on the geographic notions, that God doesn't want his people to settle away from his will - and as people continue moving east (away from his will) then he finally scatters them so that they don't settle "in the east" (or away from his will)
- Story level repetition (post flood stories parallel the pre flood stories)
- Creation and re-creation at the flood
- Adam and Eve is God affirming the goodness of creation and inviting them to join him in his rest but they fail to do so an pursue themselves anyways
- Cain is invited to do the same, humanity spirals, then God reaffirms the goodness of creation in the flood through a recreation
- Now in Babel, after eating of the Tree of Knowledge, mankind is starting to look like God but not in the way intended... God knows that humanity haven't learned how to know when to say enough so he can't let them settle (thus the "nothing will be impossible for them" being a problem)
- This story is a lot about technology - they invest the brick
- God doesn't have a problem with them building a tower
- When Hebrew interrupts a dialogue it means there are multiple conversations taking place in the story
- So at verse 4 is there a second action/story start - a story about "acquiring" and "names" (Cain and Abel)
- God waits to see what humans will do with the brick, and they use it to rebel so he then intervenes
- God doesn't condemn the action of building the tower, but he condemns the reasons which are directly contrary to his plan
- Some teach that God's confusing the speech of humanity isn't necessarily a way for him to stop to tower being built, but that this story teaches that God set up his people for success - all they have to do is work together and learn about each other, and in doing that they will be brought "back to Eden" so to speak because they will gain different perspectives by learning about the new languages, and by getting that perspective humans will be invited to "trust the story" once again.