What do you make of the Tower of Babel?

I was thinking about the concept of unity this morning. For now, we are all of different colour and creed, different languages and nationalities. The day will come when we will come to the Kingdom of God: as one people, with one creed, one King, one language.

Why then do we live in such differences right now? Does the Tower of Babel incident have anything to do with it? In light of the Kingdom of God, why would God want to frustrate human’s efforts to come together?

The account of the Tower of Babel is one of the most popular Sunday School stories. I am so familiar with it that it did not occur to me to ask questions. But I am now.

Genesis 11:1-9
1Now the whole earth used the same language and the same words.
........2 It came about as they journeyed east, that they found a plain
........in the land of Shinar and settled there.
....................3 They said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks and
................burn them thoroughly." And they used brick for stone,
................and they used tar for mortar.
..............................4 They said, "Come, let us build for ourselves a city,
........................and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and
........................let us make for ourselves a name, otherwise we will
........................be scattered abroad over the face of the whole
........................earth."
........................................5 The LORD came down to see the city and the
................................tower which the sons of men had built.
...............................6 The LORD said, "Behold, they are one people, and
........................they all have the same language. And this is what
........................they began to do, and now nothing which they
........................purpose to do will be impossible for them.
......................7 "Come, let Us go down and there confuse their
................language so that they will not understand one another's
................speech."
...........8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face
........of the whole earth; and they stopped building the city.
9 Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of the whole earth; and from there the LORD scattered them abroad over the face of the whole earth.

First, a bit of exegesis. All along, Christians, from Sunday School teachers (I, included) to scholars have interpreted Gen 11:1-9 to be an account of the preposterous pride of human and the divine punishment for all such acts of arrogance and hubris. We have adopted v.4, “a tower whose top will reach into heaven” as key to the theme of the story: the human attempt to assert autonomy, attack heaven, and challenge God. Therefore God’s response was to frustrate their plans by separating them by languages, and thus discouraging anymore attempts to be better than God.

Lately, there have been some scholars who questioned the aspects of the traditional pride-and-punishment reading of the account and paid more attention to its theme of cultural origins on its own terms. I read Hiebert’s article “The Tower of Babel and the Origin of the Worlds Cultures” and here are some points to consider:

1) The theme of the story is about the origins of cultural difference and not about pride and punishment at all.

2) This story is explicitly about language: the existence of a single, uniform language spoken by all people. To emphasize this theme, the narrator repeats it in v.1 – “one language” and “one collection of words”. The key word “language” is used five times in the account and “words” once.

3) The motive of the people in the account is explicitly stated: their desire to stay in one place (v.2-4). They wanted cultural homogeneity of the human race.

4) The word “pride” was never used by the narrator. The idea was inferred from a single image, the tower with its top in the sky, which is only for the people to stay in one place. It is not the narrator’s center of attention. It is mentioned only twice and only in stock phrase, “a city and a tower” (v.4, 5). The tower is therefore only an aspect of the cityscape the narrator describes, rather than the primary object of attention. In addition, it fell out of the narrative entirely in the second half of the account. The description “its top in the sky” is an ancient Near Eastern cliché for height and it implies neither an attempt to scale the heavens nor an arrogant revolt against divine authority.

5) On the phrase “let us make a name for ourselves”, a thorough survey of biblical usage will show that making a name is never used to describe self-centeredness, vanity or insubordination. In fact, it is a noble venture, essentially the act of establishing an identity that will endure. The people wanted to establish a common identity, which is closely related to the larger goal of remaining together to preserve a single culture. As such, the phrase expresses no conceit or defiance but an impulse toward cultural homogeneity at the heart of the human project.

6) Verse 5 is the story’s turning point – God came down to see the human project. He did not come to respond to the tower at all but the cultural homogeneity of its builders.

7) Verse 6 basically is where God said, “Looks like from what they have accomplished already, it looks like their plans to remain one people with one language in one place will succeed,” which spurred him to confuse the language, the primary markers of culture.

8) God diversified culture in order to disperse the human population, as opposed to the people wanting to stay in one place – “Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the earth” (9:1-7). From the data of the story, God’s response to counteract the human desire for homogeneity by introducing heterogeneity is without any negative connotations or consequences. It is his will for diversity and he “scattered the people for their own benefit” (Ibn Ezra, Commentary, 143).

Now comes the pertinent question I am asking right from the start of this discourse, why did God introduce diversity and pluralism into the human race? Would life be better and fairer if we spoke one language and carried one look? Would there be massacres and genocide, discrimination and prejudice?

But then again, can a world that is homogenous in attributes be any different? Would there be less violence and evil?

Regrettably, I think not.

pearlie
Picture by Rodolfo Clix

Theodore Hiebert, “The tower of Babel and the origin of the world's cultures,” Journal of Biblical Literature 126 no 1 Spr (2007): 29-58.