The Scattering of Humanity and the Judgment of God on Human Hubris—Lectionary Reflection for Pentecost Sunday C (Genesis 11)

The Tower of Babel - Peter Bruegel the Elder

Genesis 11:1-9 New Revised Standard Version UpdatedEdition

11 Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. ² And as they migrated from the east, they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. ³ And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and fire them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone and bitumen for mortar. ⁴ Then they said, “Come, 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.” ⁵ The Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which mortals had built. ⁶ And the Lord said, “Look, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. ⁷ Come, let us go down and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.” ⁸ So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. ⁹ 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.

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                On the day the Holy Spirit fell upon a gathering of Jesus’ followers as they prayed, pilgrims from many lands were milling about in the streets of Jerusalem. They had gathered for the Pentecost harvest festival. When the Spirit entered each member of the gathered community, they began to proclaim the gospel in the languages of the pilgrims, even though they had never learned these languages. This led to questions that Peter would address. In the course of the day, the church was born (Acts 2:1-36).

                The second chapter of the Book of Acts is the definitive story of the Pentecostal birth of the church. In year C, one of the options for the first reading comes from Genesis 11. Whereas the story in Acts 2 speaks of overcoming language barriers, the reading from Genesis 11 introduces those very language barriers. This is the story of the infamous Tower of Babel. When we put the two stories together, the story of Babel speaks of the confusion of languages, while Pentecost speaks to its reversal. When it comes to the story of Babel, the root issue is human hubris. Pentecost serves as the antidote to this hubris, an antidote rooted in the gospel of Jesus.

                According to the story in Genesis 11, up to this point in Genesis, the peoples of the world spoke one language. This was a monolingual, mono-cultural world that descended from Noah and his three sons. As described, the world was rather small, such that they all seemed to have stuck together. They even migrated together, moving eastward. When they came to the land of Shinar, they settled in and began to build a city.  You might be wondering where this land of Shinar is located. According to Genesis 10:10, the plain of Shinar included three cities, Babel, Erech, and Accad. In other words, this land lay in the Tigris-Euphrates valley, which is now in Iraq. While Genesis 10 sets out all the nations that descended from Noah, Genesis 11 focuses on one part of this larger story, the building of Babel, the tower, and its aftermath, including introducing us to Abraham and his family.

            Genesis 1-11 offers us a pre-history that sets the stage for God’s call of Abraham, through whose descendants the nations will be blessed. We needn’t read this as actual history to hear a word on Pentecost Sunday.

                According to the story we have before us, when the migrants from the east made their way to the land of Shinar, they decided to make bricks and build a city. Not only did they build a city, but they also built a tower in the middle of the city to reach the heavens. Why would they do this? They did so because they believed the gods lived in the heavens. In essence, they sought to storm heaven. While this story takes place outside historical time, the towers themselves are well known to us in the form of the ziggurats, towers that could be found in many of the cities of Mesopotamia, including Babylon. These ziggurats were earthen towers with stairs on all sides. At the top of the tower was an altar. This served in essence as a “Stairway to Heaven” (to borrow from Led Zeppelin). In this story, the tower was designed not to facilitate the worship of the gods, but so the people could make a name for themselves. It served as an expression of human hubris. According to the narrator, this was an evil act that the LORD (Yahweh) did not welcome.

While the residents of this primeval city of Babel built a stairway into the heavens, Yahweh came down to check things out. Since the Book of Genesis likely came into existence during the Babylonian exile, the city of Babel would not have been seen positively. When it comes to a comparison of temples—those built in Mesopotamia and those found in Israel—Peter Enns and Jared Byas note: “By contrast, Israel’s worship structures (the tabernacle and later the temple) don’t have steps going up to heaven. Instead, Israel waits for God to come down.” [Peter Enns & Jared Byas,  Genesis for Normal People, Patheos Press. Kindle loc 984].

Why did the people of Babel want to make a name for themselves? They were afraid of being scattered across the land. They believed that if they could climb into heaven, they could control their destiny. However, just the opposite happened. Yahweh responded to their hubris by confusing their languages and scattering them across the land.  

Now, there is something interesting going on here. While the residents of Babel were afraid of being scattered, Yahweh and the divine council also seem to be afraid of something.  Yahweh says to the council:  “Look, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them” (Gen. 11:6). There are a couple of possible reasons why God might be concerned, including being concerned that the people of the earth might abuse their power. Contextually, this can be read as a response to the imperial inclinations that drove the Babylonian kingdom. So, we might read this through the lens of Genesis 3, where God exiled Adam and Eve to prevent them from gaining access to the tree of life, such that they might become immortal. This was not so much an act of punishment as it was creating a barrier that prevented them from engaging in actions that might be detrimental to their welfare. The same might be true here.  So, God confuses their languages and scatters them, such that the nations are born. It is these nations that God will ultimately bless through Abram and his descendants (Gen. 12:1-4).

When it comes to the pairing of this story, with its confusion of languages, with the Pentecost story of Acts 2, it is worth noting that while the people hear the good news in their own languages, the individual languages remain. This is not an argument for a monolingual, monocultural world. Cameron B.R. Howard offers this helpful word on the connection of the readings:

When these two stories are juxtaposed, the temptation can arise to see Pentecost as an undoing of Babel. However, as New Testament scholar Eric Barreto emphasizes, Pentecost does not reverse the consequences of the tower, retreating to some imagined monolingual, monocultural ideal. Rather, ethnic, linguistic, and cultural differences are preserved, while the Holy Spirit serves, in Barreto’s words, as a “binding agent,” enabling each person to be understood in his or her own native tongue.  In the Babel account, fear is the binding agent that drives the building projects: fear of dispersal, of loss, of living with otherness. Both the Babel and the Pentecost accounts emphasize the power of human unity, without expecting human sameness, sending people out into the world to forge connections with those who are different from themselves. [Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship: 2 (Kindle p. 320).]

In other words, diversity is a good thing. It helps us as humans to find the source of our unity as a people, not in our sameness, but in the enlivening presence of God’s Spirit. This is an important word at a time when forces are at work to create monolingual and monocultural realities that stifle our true humanity. As Leanne Van Dyk writes:

At heart, the tower of Babel issues a protest against the kind of unity and independence attempted in human self-sufficiency. The story critiques the “us vs. them” rhetoric of our political culture; it critiques the power dynamics of hierarchy at the expense of community; it critiques autonomy disconnected from God. All these critiques profoundly resonate with deep currents in Christian theology. Christian theological reflection, across multiple centuries and contexts, points out the folly of a prideful autonomy, the delusion of a rejection of creaturely identity, and the blindness of a denial of vocation and call. Christian doctrines of creation, theological anthropology, redemption and salvation, sin and brokenness, new life and hope for fulfillment, all find their echo in the tower of Babel. [Connections 2 (Kindle p. 321)].

Pentecost doesn’t lead to uniformity, but it opens opportunities to experience oneness in diversity.