This transcript was auto-generated. 

This has been a fascinating story but what does it mean and what can it teach us. Well, were going to take a couple of episodes to dry and draw some conclusions about that. It’s a rather difficult story to understand. On the face of it, it doesn’t seem to show God in a very good light, and some would say, that happens fairly frequently in the Old Testament. However, the thing to do if you’re reading in the spirit of the text, you may want to remember that this is God being talked about here, even though you might think that He’s appearing in a bad light, your duty as a reader is to assume that you might be wrong and that what God did was right. Our responsibility is to figure out, how could it possibly be right because the presupposition is that if it is God, and whatever he does is right. You might find think at the first glance you disagree with God, but the point remains that it’s God, so by definition, there must be a good reason and we just need to sometimes dig deep to find it.  When it comes to interpreting this story a later text from Deuteronomy chapter 32 offers some helps.

Remember the days of old; consider the generations long past. Ask your father and he will tell you, your elders, and they will explain to you. When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, when he divided all mankind, he set up boundaries for the peoples according to the number of the sons of Israel.  For the Lord’s portion is his people, Jacob his allotted inheritance.

(Deuteronomy 32: 7-9)

Deuteronomy tells us when he divided mankind, and he up boundaries between and on all people. I want you to notice it was the spreading out of the people led to the creation of separate nations.   Look with me and see what the New Testament tells us the purpose of all this was. Acts chapter 17 helps. 

26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us.

(Act 17: 26-27)

We are told God scatters the people in Genesis 11. Deuteronomy says he set the boundaries and the Apostle Paul agrees with and confirms God purpose for us here in Acts chapter 17. God did this so that we would seek him out, reach out for him and find him. This tells us God made from one common line every nation of men and women who dwell on the face of the earth. Then God determine the boundaries of nations, and he scattered them. Here the people gather together in one place, and they try and build a tower that will reach up to heaven. Thinking they can erase the distinction between earth and heaven. So, among other things there’s also a sort of early utopian kind of vision going on here. They think, we can build a structure that’s so large and encompassing that that that it can give access to and maybe even replace heaven itself. That is interesting in and off itself, but even more interesting is that it appears that God objects to it. It is extraordinarily interesting, and it’s an indication to me of the unbelievable profundity of these early bible stories.

I believe one thing we should have learned from the 20th century, is that there is something extraordinary dangerous about totalitarian utopian visions.  It is something Dostoyevsky wrote about, in his great book Notes from underground, which I read 30 years ago whilst on holiday in Kenya. Dostoyevsky had figured out by the early 1900s that there was something incredibly dangerous when a nation develops a utopian vision of the future. Well, we know now what happened in the 20th century because of the widespread proliferation of utopian ideologies. Horrors happened on a scale that had never been matched in human history before.  Now there was plenty of horror before the 20th century, but I suppose before the industrial revolution there wasn’t as much industrial clout for nations to bring those visions to fruition. In this early in the biblical narrative, we have a warning against arrogance. We need our social systems to be large enough to protect us, but small enough so that we have a place in them. 

So, what was so dangerous about what the people on the plain of Shinar were doing here in Genesis?  Well, I’ll hopefully unpack that a little more next time.