God's act at Babel shows a holy jealousy -a refusal to let mankind build beyond its Maker
God's act at Babel shows a holy jealousy -a refusal to let mankind build beyond its Maker
Tower of Babel (reimagined) in Mesopotamia
-Sumer c. 4500 - c. 1900 BC [modern day Iraq]
"At first, the people of the whole world had only one language and used the same words...They said to one another, "Come on! Let's make bricks and bake them hard." They said now let's build a city with a tower that reaches the sky." Genesis 11: 1-4
"Then the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which they had built, and he said, "Now then, these are all one people, and they speak one language: this is just the beginning of what they are going to do. Soon they will be able to do anything they want! Let us go down and mix up their language so that they will not understand each other." Genesis 11: 5-8
Why would the gods purposely confuse our language?
Scripture shows that heavenly beings feared the advancement of humanity to a 'godlike level'. To slow human progress, man's lifespan was shortened to 120 years (Genesis 6:3), the flood reset the earth, and then at Babel language itself was fractured. Each act seems like a deliberate delay of human advancement. The question remains: why?
What God-or gods- would feel threatened by their own creation? A fallible act indeed.
"A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool"- William Shakespeare