7.9.24 - The Sin of Shinar I

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.”

As we look at the story of Babel, we’re pressed with a question that’s hard to answer: What did the people on the plain of Shinar do wrong? So far in Genesis, every time people screw up, the text is pretty clear to tell us how. But this Babel story is so short, it doesn’t take the time to explain what went wrong. It’s clear that God disapproves of this city and tower they’ve set out to build, because he stops them in their tracks and sends them packing. But what about this construction project was so wrong?

I think it’s pretty safe to say, there’s nothing inherently wrong with building cities and towers. We humans are created in the image of a creator, invited to participate in and carry on with God’s work of Creation by making things out of the stuff that God has made. That’s part of the work that God laid out for Adam and Eve in the beginning with the instruction to “fill the earth.” God is a builder, so its good and right for us to build cool stuff too.

So that means we have to look a little deeper. It’s not the building project itself, but the motives behind it that God has a problem with, and maybe too something about the way they carried it out. Remember, too, those big plot questions from yesterday that hang over this story: How can humans be with God again? And how can they be what God made them to be? That’s what’s at stake in the story. So what’s happening here? What’s going on in the hearts of these people?

We see only the slightest glimpse in the conversation of verse 4. “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…” The most revealing part of this is that last phrase, “Let us make a name for ourselves.” The thing in their heart that God sees and takes issue with is pride. They want to build a name, a reputation, an identity for themselves through the work of their hands.

Remember, the thing that made humans special from the rest of the creation was that they were made in God’s image. That’s what made them matter. That’s where their identity was supposed to be. But instead, these people at Shinar want to make an identity for themselves. And they think that if they do that, then they can work their way back to God. That’s what they mean by a tower that reaches into the heavens. We could have in mind here something like an ancient Mesopotamian ziggurat, a massive stepped temple that acts like a stairway between heaven and earth, between where the gods live and where humans live. If they work hard enough, they think, if they make something of themselves, then maybe they can satisfy that ache in their soul for something more, fill that God-shaped hole in their heart. Maybe they can build a way for themselves to walk among the gods. At it’s core, that’s what human pride always is.

The Ziggurat of Ur, located in the province of UR-Nasiriyah, Dhi Qar, Iraq.

But pride always has casualties. When we try to raise ourselves up, we always step on someone else in the process. The Babel story is permeated with ties and allusions to other places in Scripture where people are being exploited and taken advantage of. Think about it: where else do we read about people making bricks to build big buildings? The Egyptian pyramids were built with bricks made by Israelite slaves. They weren’t just building a quaint little town in Shinar, they were building an empire. We call this place Babel in English to make good use of the wordplay (Babel / “babble”), since this is where languages were confused. But the Hebrew word is the same one that we elsewhere translate as Babylon, that great and terrible empire that becomes the epitome of human pride, violence, and oppression.

Look what Isaiah says about the king of Babylon and his pride:

“You said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; above the stars of God I will set my throne on high; I will sit on the mount of assembly in the far reaches of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.’”
(Isa 14:13-14)

When humans try to lift ourselves up to God, to work our way back to him on our own, we always trample over other people to get there. That’s what happens when we try to make a name for ourselves, to secure our identity by what we can accomplish, though it’s usually in more small, subtle, and ordinary ways. This kind of pride is what God condemned at Shinar, though we’ll find there’s a little more going on too.