Was Babel right?

Question

Dig this. Here's part of Genesis 11 for you:

'...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 and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth."

'But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men 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."

Now take a look at that. God doesn't say in there, "What a ridiculous bunch of jerks. I'm going to smack them for their arrogance." He in fact says exactly the OPPOSITE - that their plans would be unstoppable unless he intervened.

Does this mean that God was afraid men would come and seize Heaven? Does it mean that God is intrinsically opposed to the aims of unity and hard-earned reknown? How can a person who believes in the goodness of this god and the truth of the Bible make sense of this?

Answer 1

Just by the way the question is posed...I can't imagine God in fear of "man" taking over Heaven. God is suppose to be The Supreme Being.

I'm not a student of The Bible, however here is my take on this statement. Just for the record, I held my opinion and gave the question thought overnight. I think I'll answer in more modern day terms.

The people that built the Tower seem to only be guilty of vanity in wanting to make a name for themselves. A building capable of reaching Heaven? What would be the purpose if when we got to Heaven, and couldn't get through The Pearly Gates anyway? Perhaps they were family that didn't want to seperate from each other. Even if God "scrammbled" their language; they had the intelligence to build the tower, wouldn't they also have the intelligence to develope a way to communicate past the language barrier?

I think that God, as a parent (the Bible says we are all children of God) was proud of the unity, intellect, diligence and hard work that went into building the tower. He had flooded the world because people couldn't work together as a whole and instead became corrupt. He is portrayed as a loving God, my interpitation of His statement... "I saved these people because I thought they were my best example of humanity. Look at what they are capable of without my intervention! If I give them the gift of multiple languages, they could re-populate the world with great diversity. They carry this story with them to prove that "Unity" can make any task possible regardless of how impossible it appears. A sort of "all for one and one for all" theme. In short, I think God was amazed.
The Bible also says God created man for His pleasure. I can see His pleasure at discovering how man could become one through unity, achieve success and overcome their obstacles. Isn't that what every parent hopes for in their children?

We would be fortunate indeed if we could achieve this kind of unity again. Perhaps we could escape all the greed and needless deaths from the many wars we have had. As for the truth of the Bible..."Man" inturpeted the Bible many ways, "Man" is vain and may have inturpeted in a way that made "Man" feel better.?

Seems like a logical explanation to me.

Answer 2

It does not make sense that there ever was a tower of Babylon, for if there was we would be in Heaven right now. As the story goes, mankind was making a tower high enough to get into Heaven, and God made all the workers speak a different language so nobody could understand eachother and therefore operation ceased. But now have spaceships that go way higher then any human can build a tower, and still, we have not found Heaven.

Answer 3

The previous chapter if you recall, was the flood in which God wiped out the entire world for being continuously evil. God, having the ability to know the future foresaw man's wickedness, and concluded that they were heading down the exact same path as the pre flood civilization. Instead of flooding the earth again (since He already promised He would never do that again), He instead scattered the people.

edit: Do a search, linguist agree that all language is derived from one originating in the Mesopotamian region. Also, the tower of Babel has been found, and the event was spoken about in a few ancient cultures. It isn't just found in the Bible

Answer 4

Why are we trying to make sense of an incredibly old tribal document that was written to stir an ancient, warlike tribe of people into a frenzy of xenophobic hatred? An even cursory reading of the dreadful document (and yes, I have read the Bible cover to cover, which is more than most Christians can say) shows frequent instances of genocide, war, mysogyny, and slaughter.

Alas, I will entertain

no one here yet has answered the question. Hell, I wonder if some of you even read the question. God was NOT punishing man for his "arrogance". Look at the wording. He scattered them out of fear that they would be able to achieve the impossible, dare I say, become more powerful than God himself (after all, what else could God possibly rationalize as being impossible?)

So instead he divided them ethnically. How many wars has this caused? How much violence and hatred and bigotry has existed in history because of this wholly divine construct? If God wanted them to scatter and multiply, why not just take a bunch of them and drop them off somewhere? why go through all the trouble of changing their language and ethnicity, when it would lead to a future of suffering and misery. How can you say God loves people when he consciously instilled a murderous difference between them, when before they were living quite harmoniously with each other?

So answer the question, Christians. And no more of this "man was too arrogant/decadent" nonsense, nothing in the passage mentions them as being either arrogant or decadent, just ambitious.

In any regards, my answer to the question is that you shouldn't be turning to the xenophobic, mysogynist texts of ancient tribals as a source of inspiration. On a literature level, it is the metaphorical full circle of faith, and that is the presence of fear. Fear of divine punishment is the cornerstone of Judeo-Christian ethics (do good... or God will put you in HELL!), and when we examine the actions of God himself, we see a fearful deity; fearful that his own creation will become greater than he is.

Answer 5

As most everyone does they read into it a bunch a bologna.

However, the Tower of Babel was tower built by wicked men in opposition to God and his word. The built the tower to the stars, that is it references of "let us build a tower to the heavens" it was astrology they were worshipping not God. God came down and confused their language, for he knew that if they continued and succeeded then the whole world would have become totally corrupted again and he would have to destroy man from the face of it. The tower was actually a ziggurat, in ancient Mesoptamia. This was also what the famous babylonian Hanging Gardens were, that was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

Answer 6

You missed the most important part of that scripture.
Look closer at the part (you quoted it) where it says, "so that we can make a name for ourselves and NOT BE SCATTERED OVER THE FACE OF THE EARTH.
This, is why God confused the languages. Why?
Because this was in direct conflict to God's desire to have the earth full of people.
at Genesis 1:14 we read "28 Further, God blessed them and God said to them: “Be fruitful and become many and fill the earth and subdue it, and have in subjection the fish of the sea and the flying creatures of the heavens and every living creature that is moving upon the earth.”"
So you see, it had nothing to do with God being "afraid" of man, but everything to do with, man's attempt at thwarting God's plan(word).

Answer 7

Dude! Imagine the Creator of the universe afraid of some very little men on a planet of insignificance. Then imagine what power it would take to confuse the language of them overnight. Now ask your question and come up with the right answer, not!

Answer 8

Easy. Let me help you. They were building what was known as a Ziggurat. It was a tower that reached high in the sky. At the top of the tower they built an altar to their god. God wasn't concerned with them reaching heaven, He was more concerned with them worshiping a useless god. He is concerned about that today.

Answer 9

God confounded men's tongues so that they would scatter around the world to populate it. It was not his intent for everybody to stay in one place, and become important.
But you exemplify the people who don't study the bible, and then think you know all the answers.

Answer 10

This is about as sensible as most of the rest of Genesis -- i.e., not very. Factoid: in Semitic languages, bab el means gateway to god.