Equal to But Not With

Equal in Our Own Minds

Genesis 11:1–4 (NIV)

Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As people 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; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”

Once again, man seeks to transgress human limits and immortalize themselves in divine ambition. Reminiscent of the the garden where Eve sought to become equal to God, man seeks to match the divine with the ambitious building of a tower.

The tower is built with the materials

Oneness with God

Genesis 11:5–9 (NIV)

But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people 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.