The Rise and Fall of Proto-Babylon

We begin with the setting of Genesis 11:1-9. We are told that the ‘people migrated from the east [and] they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there’ (v. 2). This was an ancient name given to the Mesopotamian Valley in between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the site of modern day Iraq, as well as the center of the ancient Babylonian Empire.

Verses 1 and 9 involve a literary device called an inclusio, which function like bookends. They usually use the same words or concepts, and often similar phrases. They can form a contrasting situation, where the thing has changed, or a returning situation where some unifying principle makes sense of the whole. Or some combination thereof. Here, we have a turn of events. From,

“Now the whole earth had one language and the same words” (v. 1),

to,

“there the LORD confused the language of all the earth” (v. 9).

The referent THEY in verses 3 and 4 is generic. It is not merely those ‘people [who] migrated from the east’ (v. 2), but speaks, as if one man, for the project that the people had been led to undertake. Moses is not claiming here that any one person said those exact words, but rather it is a means of summarizing.

As Calvin points out: “Moses expressly relates, that the work was undertaken not by the counsel or the will of one man only, but that all conspired together, so that the blame cannot be cast exclusively upon one, nor even upon a few.”1 But it is frequently asked: What was so wrong with this particular project? I would dare say that much of the reason for the unintelligibility of the answer is that the whole world around us is engaging in the same project today on an even grander scale. We are not dumbfounded at the answer. We are offended. That is the problem.

But we will see two main parts to this passage.

• A fourfold human rebellion

• A twofold divine response

Doctrine. More humans beings ruled over by humans less than Christ is more evil than you can imagine.        

A Fourfold Human Rebellion

If anyone asks what was so bad about what they did at Babel, we can respond, from the flow of this text, that the sin was fourfold—namely, an attempt: 1. to reach the heavens, 2. to make a name for themselves, 3. to withdraw from filling the earth to collect together, and 4. to reverse the curse by their own means. And we will move not in chronological order in the text, but from the surface to the depths—that is, from those items which are more obviously the sin to that which only surfaces as we dig it up from under the same text.

First, they said ‘let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens’ (v. 4a). What is most obvious to first-time readers is the height here, so that some arrogance and idolatry is suggested. One meaning of the word babel suggests the same—that is, “the gateway of the god (or gods).” Did they really think it would reach heaven or some spiritual realm? I think Calvin is right to call this a “hyperbolical form of speech, in which they boastingly extol the loftiness of the structure they are attempting to raise.”2 The figurative nature of this is supported by similar expressions such as in the report of the spies of Israel:

“Our brothers have made our hearts melt, saying, ‘The people are greater and taller than we. The cities are great and fortified up to heaven’” (Deut. 1:28).3

Now, even though the text itself does not mention demonic actors—only God and men as actors—nevertheless, what the rest of the Bible teaches us about the spiritual realm and about Babylon is enough to bear those dark spiritual forces in mind. So there is the added element here of having Satanic provocation. So, about the beast of final Babylon, we are told, “And to it the dragon gave his power and his throne and great authority” (Rev. 13:2).

Second, we are given something of a clear human motive: ‘and let us make a name for ourselves’ (v. 4b). Nowadays they say that so and so “understood the assignment.” Well, these people did not understand the assignment. The assignment from God to man from the beginning was to make a name for God: “Not to us, O LORD, not to us, but to your name give glory” (Ps. 115:1). Kuyper said that this articulates “the notion of establishing a law for future generations of the human race,”4 or, as Calvin called it, “an eternal monument to themselves.”5

Third, look at the rest of that same thought. There is a motive behind the motive. In other words, the text does the digging for us. The next layer is: ‘lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth’ (v. 4b). It’s almost as if they did understand the assignment all too well and despised it! What is the language God used to Adam and Eve for this making much of God’s name? It was, “fill the earth and subdue it” (Gen. 1:28). They intentionally do the opposite. They allow themselves to become spellbound to the human usurpers to be “god” for them, to huddle around the world system for their daily bread.

Fourth, working around verse 4 to the surrounding context, more clues emerge. Look especially at God’s own assessment: ‘Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do’ (v. 6). This oneness of humanity is obviously judged as negative. It is not an incidental detail. The divine words root the sin in the oneness. It is a deliberately rebellious unity. Consider that this is where the Garden of Eden was believed to be. They knew enough of the tradition.

So, with all those other details in mind, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower’ (v. 4a) becomes an alternative, opposition kingdom project. So it is that all secularist projects are fundamentally religious. They are not non-religious. They are antichrist.

Not all that is cooperative is of God. This the spirit of Psalm 2 set to “positive” construction:

“Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD and against his Anointed, saying, ‘Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us” (Ps. 2:1-3).

In short, Babel is a type and shadow of the antichrist utopianism in that spiritual Babylon that pervades the Scriptures, serving as a euphemism for Rome (see 1 Peter 5:13) and Jerusalem, even called “Sodom and Egypt” in Revelation 11, and making the final opposition to Christ in Revelation 18.

A Twofold Divine Response

There was a scattering and there was a separating—that is a judgment by God and a mercy by God. So we have a paradoxical truth, that the same divine action was, to quote Calvin again, both a “grace” and “a violent route.”6 How can it be both?

Again, starting at the surface, we read the divine sentence: ‘Come, let us go down and they're confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech’ (v. 7). Once again, notice the anthropomorphism. God does not need to get a better view of anything. There’s even mocking irony here—“He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord holds them in derision” (Ps. 2:4)—Here it took the form of saying, in effect, “What are these little ants doing beating their chest? I can barely see them, they’re so tiny!”

Below the surface, the words are added,

“So the LORD dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city … And from there the LORD dispersed them over the face of all the earth” (vv. 8, 9).

Now what does this imply? Does it not mean that God caused the people to move in the direction that He had first commanded to Adam and then to Noah? He made them be the nations! This is a great human good; and yet it comes in the same breath as the judgment. Recall the angel stationed at the entry of the Garden, with his flaming sword to guard the way back to the Tree of Life (3:22-24). This was what we called a “severe mercy,” and there is something of the same going on here. A pseudo-immortality will be overcome, and many human beings will come to thank Him later.

But how is it a great human good? it will be asked.

There is an old saying. Good fences make good neighbors. It was this good in mind in the treaties made later between the Patriarchs and neighbors like Abimelech. And it was the same good discovered from a distance by all those political theorists of the Western tradition, from Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero, down to Montesquieu and the participants at Independence Hall. Whatever differences they all had, it occurred to them all that republics must be small. 

However, it may be asked, what does the size of a commonwealth and the division of such have in common?

The good of recognizing divisions between nations is that it reigns in the ambitions of tyrants to exercise power over an unnatural number of people.  It is actually very simple when we think it through. Too much power in the hands of sinners will spell the destruction of the image of God.

This divinely ordained division of nations cuts the serpent into as many pieces as there are nations and so prevents the serpent’s head from rising at any one point to consolidate all other points. Power flows like water. As water seeks its lowest plane, so power seeks its lowest common denominator; and when more people are sold on the lie that they own a thing, the less those more actually own that thing and the more distant and unaccountable the most ambitious and collected among them become. It is an old story, but here in Genesis 11, we have the Spirit-inspired dark prototype for a warning. 

Practical Use of the Doctrine

Use 1. Correction. We often have a problem applying our doctrine of sin from the individual to the collective. But consider that if all individual humans are that bad, then it follows that collective humanity is that bad. In his book on Common Grace, the Dutch Reformed theologian Abraham Kuyper wrote:

“What the opening chapters of Genesis offer you is not an interesting story for stimulating your curiosity, but a completely sober portrait sketched in outline, with broad strokes, in order to humble you as a member of the human race in your human understanding. So gloriously had paradise been opened, so abundantly blessed by God, and look, until at last the judgment of the Almighty is issued, that ‘every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually’ (Gen 6:5b).”7

And this also corrects our own fear of tyrants swallowing up borders: That no matter how formidable an empire may seem in its time, the time for its destruction draws nearer: “The face of the LORD is against those who do evil, to cut off the memory of them from the earth” (Ps. 34:16); and in the oracles against the nations in Jeremiah, to Babylon it is declared: “Though Babylon should mount up to heaven, and though she should fortify her strong height, yet destroyers would come from me against her, declares the LORD” (Jer. 51:53).

Use 2. Admonition. Apostate Christendom becomes Babylon, or, to put it another way, the forces of Satan’s kingdom seek to gain a foothold and then a stronghold in the earthly manifestations of Christ’s kingdom. Look at the map of history, and the truth of Jesus’ parable of the tenants is everywhere on display—the Lord always transfers His kingdom to those producing its fruit (Mat. 21:43). But then the place where it was becomes a haunt of demons and the new seat of power for spiritual Babylon.

People who have inhabited those earthly outposts of the heavenly kingdom can be taken captive by the kingdoms of this world. For the most part this happens not by getting carted off, as the inhabitants of Judah were, but by being occupied in one’s own land. Thus Zion becomes Babylon.

“By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion” (Ps. 137:1).

For reasons that are as clear as day, Reformed pastors refuse to warn their congregations about the clear and present danger of being lured into Babylon and to worship its spirit. Such a conception does not depend upon the present manifestation of spiritual Babylon being the final Babylon. That is surely the easiest way people have to change the subject. For the Christian, the most pressing political cause is to resist any centralization of power and to support any secession of states into smaller territories. This is unheard of today, but it was an obvious goal of our spiritual forefathers. It was as imperative for Saxony to break free from Charles V as it was for Judah to be separate from the Northern Kingdom. This is a vast topic, but it is made positively unapproachable by a cowardly clerical class. 

Use 3. Consolation. Consider the words of Jesus in Matthew 18 about the gates of hell. What was the boast of Babel before God scattered? It meant the GATES of the gods. But Christ has plundered the strongman, and His promise is that, through the church, that plundering of Babylon will continue. No matter who God causes to rise to temporal power, the Jerusalem above marches on through this world. I close with the words of the most quoted Old Testament prophecy of Christ in the New. Consider what it means about Jesus reigning in heaven over an advancing Zion, in this time and place:

“The LORD says to my Lord: ‘Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.' The LORD sends forth from Zion your mighty scepter. Rule in the midst of your enemies!’ (Ps. 110:1-2).

There is an “until.” It is the same “until” that the Apostle Paul sets forth in 1 Corinthians 15:25. Christ is King now; and the Lord advances His armies now. In this time and place, through your blood-bought, Spirit-filled, moral action. As we will see beginning in Genesis 12 and the new nation that God creates, His people have always been called out of Babylon (Rev. 18:4) to avoid her plagues and to watch her fall.

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1. Calvin, Commentaries, I:326.

2. Calvin, Commentaries, I:327

3. Even God described them in this way: “Hear, O Israel: you are to cross over the Jordan today, to go in to dispossess nations greater and mightier than you, cities great and fortified up to heaven” (Deut. 9:1).

4. Kuyper, Common Grace, I:362.

5. Calvin, Commentaries, I:324

6. Calvin, Commentaries, I:332.

7. Kuyper, Common Grace, I:14.