Let me give you the elevator pitch for “Babel: The Movie.”
Our camera pans across an open plain where we see a gathering of all humankind.
The powerful elite tell the surrounding peoples, “Come, let us make bricks” (11:3). And then, “Come, let us build a city with a tower that reaches to the heavens . . . We will make a name for ourselves” (11:4). God hears this and tells an army of angels, “Come, let us go down and confuse their language” (11:7).
Here’s the tension: When the globalists call together a let’s go up!, the heavens call together a let’s go down! It’s like a battle scene where two impressive forces rush the field toward one another. Except, in this case, the battlefield is vertical. It’s heaven versus earth. Earth is advancing on heaven, looking to annex new territory for itself, but God organizes a counter-offensive. His heavenly army falls upon the earthly city, infiltrates their tower, and confuses their communications. The people scatter. God and His angels return to Heaven. The credits roll and Psalm 89 plays...
Let the heavens praise your wonders, O Lord,
your faithfulness in the assembly of the holy ones!
For who in the skies can be compared to the Lord?
Who among the heavenly beings is like the Lord,
God greatly to be feared in the council of the holy ones,
and awesome above all who are around him?
O Lord God of hosts,
who is mighty as you are, O Lord,
with your faithfulness all around you?
The heavens are yours; the earth also is yours;
the world and all that is in it, you have founded them.
That is the movie I guess. In real life, I must say, mankind has devised a clever plan in Genesis 11. They plan to effectively recreate Adam. With all humanity concentrated in a single structure under one headship and speaking one language, then in theory, mankind would wield as much power as Adam once had. Even God says nothing would be impossible for them (11:6). Unfortunately, their aim is not Come let us glorify God. Instead, their rallying cry is Come let us make a name for ourselves.
Reading Genesis 11, we stand at the threshold of world history, when post-flood man comes to recognize the great power of community and its ability to overcome and master nature. The tower is a symbol of the preeminence of community over the individual. The individual gradually becomes nullified by the collective if no safeguards are put in place.
Rabbi Hirsch writes, “If the community presents itself as an end instead of a means to an end, then mankind’s whole moral future is lost . . . The individual is expected to sacrifice his life for the collective, and the collective renounces its allegiance to the individual.”
Genesis 11 is an ancient warning forwarded to all future citizens of history. The tower represents the State when it suppresses the individual for the sake of its own glory. We may notice that 1 Peter 2:5 refers to believers not as bricks but as living stones. Stones, like people, are each unique; no two are exactly alike. Meanwhile the State (at its worst) wants to mold stones into bricks. Bricks are manufactured to be exactly the same. They are interchangeable, easily stacked, and easily replaced.
It is interesting: if God does not intervene in Genesis 11, then nothing man does will be impossible (11:6). If God does not intervene in Genesis 3, then man will live forever (3:22).
Living forever? Accomplishing the impossible? Both seem like positive things. Why would God intervene to prevent these from happening?
Context is clutch.
- In the context of Genesis 3, to live forever in a fallen world is to be forever separated from life as God intended it.
- In the context of Genesis 11, to accomplish anything the collective proposes is to accomplish nothing that you the individual propose.
- God separates man from the Tree of Life so that we may escape our fallen state.
- God separates man from one collective so that we may escape a fallen State.
