7.10.24 - The Sin of Shinar II

Genesis 11:4

Then they said, “Come, let us build a 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.”

Yesterday, we saw how the issue that God took with the city and the tower these people were building in the Plain of Shinar had to do with the motives of their hearts and the way those motives led them to carry out the work. Their hearts were full of pride, seeking to make a name for themselves and lift themselves up to the heavens. But we also saw that they had to tear other people down in the effort, exploiting the weak and taking advantage of them as slave labor to make the bricks for their tower. But I think we can still look a little closer and find an even deeper brokenness at the bottom of this. To do that we need to glance back over the the story of Genesis so far with that other looming question in mind: how can humans be what God made them to be?

From the very beginning, God had given the humans a responsibility in the command to be fruitful and multiply and to fill the earth. This is part of what it means to bear God’s image in the world, to spread out all throughout the land and reflect a picture of who God is all over the earth. After Adam and Eve failed to obey this command in the Garden, their children and their children’s children didn’t do much better. In fact, things got worse and worse until God finally had to cleanse the earth that had been corrupted by violence and human sin with the flood. But after God preserved Noah and his family, he gave them that same command to be fruitful and multiply and to fill the earth. Then after a few generations pass, with that command still echoing in our ears, we get this story on the Plain of Shinar.

Keep that in mind and look back at why the people said they wanted to build their city. They say, “lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.” I think the author of Genesis wants us to see this as a direct disobedience to God’s command. He told them to fill the earth, and instead they settled down in Shinar and pile up in one place.

But that word that’s been translated “dispersed” tells us a little more. It carries with it an idea not just of spreading out, but being defeated or conquered and driven away. It’s the same word that Psalm 68:1 uses to say, “God shall arise, his enemies shall be scattered.” In the ancient Greek translation of Genesis that the people of Jesus’ day would have read, it uses a verb that’s connected to the noun “diaspora.” The idea here is something like, “let’s make a name for ourselves so that we’re not conquered and made into refugees.”

James Tissot, The Flight of the Prisoners (Exode des prisonniers), c. 1896-1902, The Jewish Museum.

The thing that’s operating underneath the disobedience, and even underneath the pride and oppression, is really fear. There’s safety in numbers, right? And these people know that if they did what God said, if they spread out and filled the earth, then they would be vulnerable. They might not be able to provide for themselves. They might not be able to defend themselves if or when some other nation came knocking. And so instead of trying to be faithful to what God had commanded, instead of trying to live into the mission that God had for humans to accomplish in the world and trusting that he would take care of them along the way, they settled in Shinar and started building an empire. They tried to make a name for themselves and become a strong, conquering nation before someone else came and conquered them.

I think this is one of the most potent effects of the curse the Fall. Outside the Garden of Eden, without the fruit of its trees to sustain us, we think we have to watch out for ourselves. And that need for self-preservation contaminates everything else, especially the way we relate to one another. We know that we can’t really take care of ourselves, but we can’t risk letting anyone else know that. So we try to cover up our fear and insecurity with false pride, and other people end up getting torn down as we try to lift ourselves up. And so it traps us in this world and system of survival of the fittest, eat or beaten, always driven by fear.

This is problem that God has with this city and tower in Shinar. It’s the beginning of a world driven fear. And I think it’s not with out a bit of sorrow that God comes down and scatters his people to keep their fear from turning them into a monster, even though that’s exactly what Babylon will eventually become.

But God always calls his people out of this fear-driven system of power, oppression, and self-preservation and calls them instead to a relationship of trust. And that’s exactly what we’ll see when we turn the page from Genesis 11 to chapter 12 with man named Abram.