![]() Society apart from God is totally unstable. Bruce Waltke concludes his analysis of Genesis 11 in these words: We sin when we look to civic triumph and culture, in place of God, as our source of meaning and direction. ![]() The concept of "city" is not evil, but the pride that we may come to attach to cities is what displeases God (Gen. God gave Israel their capital city of Jerusalem, and the ultimate abode of God’s people is God's holy city coming down from heaven (Rev. We might be tempted to conclude from this study that cities are inherently bad, but this is not so. Therefore it was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth” (Gen. Then “the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. God sees that their arrogance and ambition are out of bounds and says, "Let us go down and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another's speech” (Gen. 5:2)-they decide to make a name for themselves. Instead of exploring the fullness of the name God gave them- adam, “humankind” (Gen. Instead of filling the earth, they intend to concentrate themselves here in one location. In this case, they plan to do the opposite of what God commanded in the cultural mandate. Like Adam and Eve before them, they intend to use the creative power they possess as image-bearers of God to act against God’s purposes. God’s objection to the tower is that it will give people the expectation that “nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them" (Gen. How different from the city of peace, order, and virtue that are God’s purposes for the world. The tower they envisioned building seemed huge to them, but the Genesis narrator smiles while telling us that it was so puny that God "came down to see the city and the tower" (Gen. What did they fear? Being scattered without the security of numbers. "Let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth" (Gen. Although God does not condemn this drive to reach the heavens, we see in it the self-aggrandizing ambition and escalating sin of pride that drives these people to begin building such a mighty tower. With such a tower, people could ascend to the gods, and the gods could descend to earth. Babel, like many cities in the ancient Near East is designed as a walled enclosure of a great temple or ziggurat, a mud-brick stair tower designed to reach to the realm of the gods. With Nimrod, the tyrannical city-builder, fresh in our memory, we come to the building of the tower of Babel (Gen. He is a tyrant, a mighty hunter to be feared, and most significantly a builder of cities (Gen. Nimrod founds an empire of naked aggression based in Babylon. Among them, Ham’s grandson Nimrod stands out for his significance to the theology of work. 10:6-20), and finally the descendants of Shem (Gen. 10:2-5), then the descendants of Ham (Gen. In what is called the Table of Nations, Genesis 10 traces first the descendants of Japheth (Gen. Learning From the Psalms How to Pray Through Your Work.Beyond Rank and Power: What Philemon Tells Us About Leadership.Evangelism - Sharing the Gospel at Work.10 Key Points About Work in the Bible Every Christian Should Know.
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