Genesis 11

Chad Myhre

Genesais • Sermon • Submitted 4 years ago

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Genesis 11:1 ESV

1 Now the whole earth had one language and the same words.

Now, this presents to us a problem and forces us to go back and reconcile a few things in previous chapter.

The Babel account starts with everyone having one language… and ends with everyone being dispersed. But, in chapter 10… we already see that this has happened.

Gen 10:5… “each with his own language”

Gen 10:20… “by their clans, their languages, their lands, and their nations…

Gen 10:31… “by their clans, their languages, their lands, and their nations…

Not only did they have different languages in chapter 10… but they were divided… in terms of family… some divided by clans… those clans grew and became nations, and thus the divisions became more distinct.

In vs. 5… the nations which came from Japheth… spread out…

In vs. 18… the clans of the Canaanites… dispersed.

One guy in particular… from the line of Ham, the son of Cush… Nimrod, was exceptional amongst the people of that day. He was a mighty hunter… a great warrior… a successful and powerful leader. - Verse 9 says, that people liked to use his name in reference to great hunting events. -

Let’s say, you went out and took down a big deer. Your friends might say that you were ‘like Nimrod’.

Now… the name Nimrod might make us smile… because, we’re more familiar with it as an insult. Which is a unique story in itself. In the world of Genesis 10… calling someone a Nimrod was a great compliment. But if we hear someone called a Nimrod now… well… it’s not really a compliment.. -In fact, it has, by definition… taken a complete 180.

You want to know why?

Bugs Bunny. - Elmer Fudd declared himself to be a great hunter… so Bugs Bunny would call him Nimrod.

That’s why our world uses the name Nimrod, as an insult.

But in the ancient world… Nimrod was the mightiest of all… Men aspired to be like him. He established a great Kingdom… Starting with Babel… and then branching out to Assyria. Cities were being built… and they were branching out… building other cities…

But, when we go to chapter 11… everyone is coming to one city.

So, how do we reconcile this?

The answer, is actually pretty obvious. These chapters, are not in chronological order.

In fact, chapter ten could end like this...

… how did the sons of Noah create nations that would spread out into the world and speak different languages?… well, let me tell you… - and then, we move into chapter 11

Another quick tidbit from chapter 10…

70 descendants of Noah’s sons are named. These sons had names that became nations. We know that other nations sprung up from Noah’s sons, that are un-named. Gen. 10:5 indicates this concerning Japheth.

But, 70 are named. Why? Because God had a plan for those 70… they would be part of God’s story.

Now… the number 70 can’t be overlooked. While I’m not one to bank too much on numerology. It is a big deal in the OT… and it is still a big deal to the Jewish people…

Where as 7 is a number that speaks of completion… 70 does also, but at a whole different level.

And there’s a few notable comparisons...

God populated the world with 70 nations… mentioned here in Genesis 10…

When Jacob brought his entire family into Egypt to escape the famine… there were 70 of them. Those 70 grew into a nation while in Egypt.

When God established elders to serve under Moses and Aaron in the wilderness… there were 70 of them…

And then, in Luke 10, Jesus appointed and sent out 70 disciples… (though, some manuscripts say 72)… to minister in the cities that would receive them.

God liked to work with 70...

But, of course… there were way more than 70 people getting dispersed from Babel… - But as they were dispersed… and as they were separated and categorized… it was, according to the break downs we see in Genesis 10.

So… for this to make sense… Genesis 11 happened before Genesis 10.

Genesis 10 explains who the nations were, and how they dispersed themselves… and let us know that they had their own languages… - How did this happen? - Chapter 11 lets us know.

Genesis 11:2–3 ESV

2 And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. 3 And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar.

Historians consider this region to the be the birthplace of civilization.

It’s the place where the Tigris and the Euphrates come together and then split out into a large delta before draining into the sea. The land was very fertile and would have been able to sustain a large population of people.

Unlike Israel… this area is not covered in rocks…

In Israel, you can barely step in any direction without there being a rock… they are everywhere...

But to the east, in this great fertile plain, the people had to come up with another building material.

So they made bricks.

Interestingly… the oldest archeological structure in Israel, that has been uncovered… it a partial wall, and a gate to the ancient city of AI… It’s dated back to the time of Abraham. If you remember, Abraham had some of his servants captured, so he went into the city of AI and got them back. The gate that we can walk up to and look at, in Israel, might be that very gate..

Other than it being really old… to other interesting thing about it… is that it is not made out of rocks. It was made out of bricks… which, for Israel, was rare.

The city of AI, would have almost been a contemporary to Babel… Not that it existed at the same time, but it did exist a couple generations later.

Many look at Genesis 11:3 and say… that they have made a technological discovery. - Which might be true. The whole story centers around congregating of these people to do something new and significant. We will see in a minute, why this is bad, and why God responds the way He does.

Now, in these 9 verses, there is a ton of word play going on… but it’s all in Hebrew, and we don’t see it in the English. The first thing to take note of, is the word for Brick, and the Word for Balel (the verb, confuse… which is what God was going to do to them), are comprised of the same letters… they are just arranged differently.

This is one of those word play things that happens a lot in Hebrew. They will often use words that rhyme to make a certain point, or they will use words that have similar spelling to make a point. There’s so much going on in the Hebrew that baffles our western minds. But when an ancient Hebrew would have read this… they would have picked up on all of these.

Some of this word play was there, simply to help people remember the details of the story. These were stories that were passed on verbally, from generation to generation.... and they used literary tricks to help with the process.

In these 9 verses, there is a literary form called Chaiasmus, or Chaiasmic parallel being used. This word ‘Chaiasmus’ is derived from the Greek letter Chai… which, in it’s capital form, looks like an X. So imagine you are looking at an X… and on the top of each line in the X… there is an A on the left, and a B on the right. Then, when you look at the bottom of the X, there is a B on the left, and an A on the right.

It’s a form of comparison, by way of contrast.

And this form is all over the first nine verses of chapter 11.

We’ll just look at one, which is actually obvious enough for us to see it in the English.

In vs. 3… they said, “come let us make bricks”

then, the reversal happens in vs. 7

… come, let us go down and confuse.

The word bricks / and confuse are comprised of the same letters.

The people were putting together a city, in unified intellect..

God confused their unified intellect, and in a weird, Hebrew literary sense… un-bricked them.

Genesis 11:4 ESV

4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.”

Now… we see their crime before the Lord.

They have just confessed it openly… and they are committing it with premeditated intent.

What’s the crime?

There’s more than one here… but the big one. The blatant one… is the intent of their construction: “lest we be dispersed.”

They had very few commands from Yahweh. Just a handful. Their Bible would have been… a pamphlet at best. So, they would open their 3 page pamphlet of a Bible, and they would read… “go out into all the earth, be fruitful and multiply.”

This was God’s biggest mission… His biggest call for these people at this point. And they knew what they were supposed to do. Noah heard directly from God… Noah’s sons knew the story… It would have been passed down from person to person…

It was pretty simple. The command of Yahweh would have been preserved.

And these people knew… that if God had His way with them… they would be scattered. Why? Because that is what they were responsible to do. And they didn’t want to do that. They wanted to do their own thing. They wanted to find strength in themselves...

So, they needed to find something to replace Yahweh. They needed to do something big, that would affirm in their hearts, that they were strong… intelligent… successful… and ultimately… that they, were like God.

The unifying object… was a city and a tower… with it’s ‘top’ in the heavens.

Now, most people say that this was a common ziggurat. A ziggurat was a type of pyramid… .but it had steps that went up it so that people could access the top. A ziggurat usually had some kind of temple at both, the top, and the bottom.

They have found remains of about 30 ancient ziggurats in this region… and there is ancient literature that names about 50 more additionally.

So, it’s likely, that the tower of Babel was a ziggurat… and if it was, it involved the worship of other gods.

There is a second theory…

They built a tower, with it’s top… literally… it’s head in the heavens.

This word, for top… is overwhelmingly translated ‘head’ in the Bible.

So some have suggested… that this tower, was actually an image… a giant idol..

Would this be such a strange thing?

What would happen later on after Babel is resettled? In the book of Daniel… King Nebuchadnezzar would build a large golden image.

The speculation is… that this was a golden image of himself… so, it was a gigantic idol.... and the people were commanded to come and worship it.

So, it’s not unlikely… that this tower that they built in the early Babel days… before the dispersion.... was made in the image of a person… or at least, in the image of some kind of being that had a head.

So they built a great tower… a ziggurat… or an image. And it needed to be so high… that its head / top… would have been in the heavens… which would have been for them, a marvelous feat. Others would come and see it, and say… “Wow… if these people can build this… then they can build anything… They are mighty… they are impressive… they are great.”

If they created something unprecedented… they could say similar things about themselves. “Look what we can do. Look at our great power. There is nothing that is out of our reach.”

So they built a city… and they built a tower… for what purpose? - So that they wouldn’t be dispersed.

So they built a city… and they built a tower… for what purpose? - To thwart the will of God for humanity. To fabricate for themselves… something to replace God’s will… something to replace God’s authority… something to replace God’s direction.

So… they invented… The Government.

And since Genesis 11… humans have been eager to place their hopes in government. They have been quick to willingly place their trust in government. They have found pride, and strength, and identity… in the accomplishments of their government. - And for many, Government becomes god. It becomes the guiding force… it becomes the the giver of truth… it becomes the ultimate authority…

People trust in it… they make their requests to it… they anticipate that all their sorrows and woes will be satisfied, by government.

But early on… this was not God’s plan for humanity.

The first humans in Genesis 1… were commissioned, to go into the earth, to subdue it.. .and to be fruitful and to multiply.

This commission was given again to Noah and his sons… - Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. - and then he repeated it… be fruitful and multiply, increase greatly on the earth and multiply in it.

Outside of a few instructions about eating animals, and blood, and why you shouldn’t kill one another… this was the main thing that people were commanded to do.

And the people of Babel… they were like… - What can we do, to ensure, that we don’t have to do, the one thing that God has declared humans should do?

Genesis 11:5–7 ESV

5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. 6 And the Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.”

they were so impressed.... they don’t need God, because their tower reached into the heavens..

But, notice… God had to ‘come down to see the city and the tower’. - This tower, was nowhere near, the heavens. It was just, up in the sky a bit. Probably no higher than a cell tower. -They fell short of their goal...

But, even still… God saw their potential.

If they did this, in their unity of their opposition to God’s will… they can do so much more..

God had already watched humanity spiral to a place where they only desired wickedness at all times..

He knew where this opposition would lead…

And it meant, ultimately, that His will for humanity would go unfulfilled.

So God said, “Come, let us go down...”

This is another ‘Come, let us’ statement, where God is speaking in the midst of others, declaring a group effort to go and do things. The traditional view, is that God is speaking amongst Himself as the Trinity. A view that we have looked at in depth, and found a lot of evidence for in the scriptures… is that God was speaking amongst His divine counsel of other elohim… of created spiritual beings… and engaging them in the process. We will be looking at a passage in Deuteronomy in a bit, that tells the back story of this even on a supernatural level… so we’ll wait till we get to that.

So, God, and those He invited along… came down to confuse.. to balel… the languages of the people. - If they can’t communicate as one, they will grow frustrated and disperse. They will find the people who speak what they speak, and group together with them.

Based on the information from Gen. 10...

It would seem, that the languages were given in common, to the tribes that aligned under the named sons of Japheth, Shem and Ham.

And, they went out into different parts of the world… with their common groups, and settled in different places.

Genesis 11:8–9 ESV

8 So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. 9 Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth. And from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth.

The unfinished city was abandoned...

But, only for a time. As we saw in the previous chapter, Nimrod would come and build Babylon… and many other great cities… and then he would go and build some great cities in the region of Assyria.

Babel and Babylon are the same city.

Babylon is also described as being on the plain of Shinar in Daniel 1:2… and the ancient Jewish scholars who interpreted the OT into Greek… namely, the Septuagint… translated every incident of Babel, as Babylon. -So, it was unanimously agreed to by the ancient world… along with having the same geographical location.

So… that’s the Genesis account of Babel…

But, Moses has written for us, a backstory. We get to look behind the curtain, and see what is going on in the supernatural realm at the time of these events.

First off… let’s lay some ground work.

We covered a lot of this a couple times over the past year or so… so we’ll be quick.

Psalm 89:5–8 ESV

5 Let the heavens praise your wonders, O Lord, your faithfulness in the assembly of the holy ones! 6 For who in the skies can be compared to the Lord? Who among the heavenly beings is like the Lord, 7 a God greatly to be feared in the council of the holy ones, and awesome above all who are around him? 8 O Lord God of hosts, who is mighty as you are, O Lord, with your faithfulness all around you?

Here we see… the assembly of the holy ones… we see God is in the council of the holy ones… but He is different than the holy ones. He is greatly feared by the m… and He is awesome above them. His mightiness is not compared to theirs.

Who is in this assembly?

According to Daniel 7:9-10… whoever they are… there are thousands upon thousands of them… and they attend Him in the heavenly courts.

When Daniel 7:25-26 prophecies that authority will be taken from the Antichrist… it is God’s ‘court’ who will take it.

These heavenly beings have thrones… seats of authority in heaven, where they administrate God’s work, and participate with God, in the decisions that are made… In Isa. 14… where the fall of the devil is described… we learn a few things…

Isa. 14.13… we are given an indication, that the devil was on this divine counsel… we see that the devil ‘had a throne’… but he wants his throne to be higher than it is… He wants his throne to sit on the mount of assembly… - that is, the place where God’s divine counsel assembled… - and he wants to be like… or even replace… the Most High.

The best example of the Divine counsel working in union with God, is from 1 Kings 22.. from Michaiah’s vision:

1 Kings 22:19–23 ESV

19 And Micaiah said, “Therefore hear the word of the Lord: I saw the Lord sitting on his throne, and all the host of heaven standing beside him on his right hand and on his left; 20 and the Lord said, ‘Who will entice Ahab, that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead?’ And one said one thing, and another said another. 21 Then a spirit came forward and stood before the Lord, saying, ‘I will entice him.’ 22 And the Lord said to him, ‘By what means?’ And he said, ‘I will go out, and will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.’ And he said, ‘You are to entice him, and you shall succeed; go out and do so.’ 23 Now therefore behold, the Lord has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets; the Lord has declared disaster for you.”

God was on His throne.

The host of heaven… or, His divine counsel… were attending to Him.

And God presented the situation. - Ahab needed to fall, and someone needed to step up with a plan.

So, in vs. 21… one of these spirits from God’s counsel, came forward with a plan… God approved it… - the spirit carried out the work, and God took the credit for it.

Now… to the back story of Babel… behind the scenes..

Deuteronomy 32:7–9 ESV

7 Remember the days of old; consider the years of many generations; ask your father, and he will show you, your elders, and they will tell you. 8 When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God. 9 But the Lord’s portion is his people, Jacob his allotted heritage.

The Most High gave to the nations… their inheritance.

What are the circumstances of this inheritance?

The nations were divided by God

The borders of the people were fixed…

And this was according to… the number of the sons of God.

The second temple Jews did not like this translation… they balked at the supernatural stuff… they balked at ancient references to an old Jewish belief called the ‘two powers in heaven’… that is, God demonstrated to mankind in two forms. They balked at anything that might lend credence to the claims of Jesus… - These were the guys who were responsible for putting together the Masoretic text… which is a good manuscript… but at times, a biased manuscript.

And if your Bible says… in Deut. 32:8… ‘according to the sons of Israel’… then your translated used the Masoretic text.

But, that translation makes no sense at all.

Israel didn’t exist.

At Babel, when this happened… Abraham wasn’t even on the scene yet.... - The nations were scattered for a while, before God even took a people as His inheritance.

How would the division of the nations, defined in Genesis 10… have anything to do with the sons of Israel?

Verse 9 would make that interpretation even more confusing.

He tells the nations… that their inheritance, is the dominion and oversight of one of the sons of god.

But in verse 9, God says… that His inheritance… will be Jacob. - and as the story plays out… God starts with Abraham…

And this language is all over the scriptures… dominions… powers and principalities… - God took Israel as His people… but the other nations… they worshipped idols....

Why did they worship idols? Because the sons of God… that were given oversight to them… rebelled.

How do we know this?

First off… the religious activities of these nations proves to us… that they are not being given the same spiritual instruction as Israel..

Secondly… we just saw in the example of the devil… that members of God’s divine counsel can rebel..

Thirdly… Psalm 82 clearly tells us… that they did rebel..

Psalm 82:1–8 ESV

1 God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment: 2 “How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked? Selah 3 Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute. 4 Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.” 5 They have neither knowledge nor understanding, they walk about in darkness; all the foundations of the earth are shaken. 6 I said, “You are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you; 7 nevertheless, like men you shall die, and fall like any prince.” 8 Arise, O God, judge the earth; for you shall inherit all the nations!

Just so there is no confusion… there is no God like our God.

The term ‘god’ as it is given to other beings… is the general word ‘elohim’… which speaks of any being in the spiritual realm… and it is used broadly in the Bible.

In this passage… God is in His place, in the divine counsel… and He is holding judgment.

Those who are being judged… are judging unjustly… they are being wicked. They are not giving justice to the people. They are not operating in knowledge or understanding… -

So… here is God’s judgment upon them.

You are gods.... you are elohim… sons of the Most High… all of you… - that is, all of you who are being judged in this gathering of the counsel.

And here’s the judgment… - like men you shall die…

And Psalm 82 ends… with the ongoing story of the Bible..

Because… in a way… what happened at Babel… sets the stage, for the ongoing story of the Bible.

Here is God’s plan…

He is going to judge the earth; and He is going to inherit ALL THE NATIONS.

Wait a minute.

The Deut. 32 explanation of Babel says… that He is only taking Jacob as His inheritance.

The rest of that nations are under the oversight of rebellious elohim… they suffer under the domains of wicked, rebellious powers and principalities… that have no knowledge or understanding....

But the promise at the end of Ps 82 is… “You shall inherit ALL THE NATIONS.”

This is why Babel is a big deal. .

The nations were scattered.

God took one nation...

But… there is a promise… that He will one day… call those who are captive, back into His hand.

And that… is the good news… - that, is the Gospel.

The work of Jesus, on the cross, and through the rez… has conquered sin and death… and has opened a way for all the nations, to come back to God...

Which… also, is why Pentecost is such a big deal… because, as I mentioned last week… all those nations from Genesis 10… the ones who were put under the dominion of the rebellious sons of God… were present… listed from East to West… excluding Tarsus… but Paul covers that later… - they were all there, and the preaching of the Gospel by Peter… led to the salvation of 3000 men… PLUS women and children…

All people… who previously… were not part of God’s inheritance… but now are.

God began to inherit the nations there in Acts 2… and it’s been going on, ever since.