Genesis 11:1-9

From Babel to Babylon

Genesis 11:1-9

• After the flood, Noah’s three sons, Shem, Japheth, and Ham, also had sons, and they spread out into their territories by their clans within their nations, each with their own language.

• Genesis Chapter 11 begins, “Then all the people of the earth spoke the same language.” At that time, all the people on the earth were descendants of Noah and his three sons; they all spoke the same language and had the same accent.

• “As they moved eastward, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.” All the people were now coming to the land of Shinar, but it appears that it was the descendants of Ham eventually dwelt in the land of Shinar and established its own kingdom.

The Land of Shinar

• The land of Shinar, Chaldea (Genesis 11:31), and Mesopotamia (Acts 7:2-4) all refer to the Babylonian region.

• Shinar was a plain located between the rivers of the Euphrates and Tigris. These two rivers are the cradle of Shinar’s culture (Sumerian civilization).

→ Genesis 10:10 says about Nimrod: “The first centers of his kingdom were Babel, Erech, Akkad and Calneh in Shinar.” (Genesis 10:10)

• Nimrod was the son of Cush and the grandson of Ham. He and all the people moved eastward. Later, Nimrod established his own kingdom in Shinar, and Babel was number one of first centers of his kingdom.

• Babel is Babylon. At that time, Babel had not yet become an empire. The first king appeared in the Bible is “King Shinar,” whose name was Amraphel (Genesis 14:1).

• Amraphiel means “the mighty people.” Soon after Abraham entered Canaan, he encountered a war between four kings and five kings. Amraphiel was king of Shinar. From Shem to Abraham, ten generations had passed, and Shinar not only had a king, but also he was the first of the four kings.

→ People attempted to build a city and a tower in Shinar

• Shinar was a plain, a good place for human development. All the people of the world moved here and decided to build a city and a tower with its top reaching to heaven in order to proclaim their name and to prevent them from being scattered across the earth.

• Cain was the first to build a city and named it after his son Enoch (Genesis 4:17).

• After the flood, people wanted to build a city in order to proclaim a human name, but this was a collective idea and action, because everyone wanted to be famous. They were either the people saved from the flood, or the descendants of those saved from the flood. They did not all remember God’s salvation, nor did they proclaim God’s salvation.

• God’s beginning word for men was to “fill the earth” (Genesis 1:28), but now the people remained in Shinar and refused to leave. And they intended to build a city to avoid scattering the whole earth. This was against God’s initial word.

• They also built a tower with its top reaching to heavens. The top of the tower was the gate to heaven (God). Men’s desire to ascend to heaven on their own effort was a collective act. However, “No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven ---- the Son of Man” (John 3:13), because the body of the Son of God was not yet ready (Hebrews 10:5). No one comes to the Father except through the Son of God. The gate way to heaven and to see God is Lord Jesus, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man (John 1:51, Genesis 28:12).

• Building a city and a tower with its top reaching to heaven is a collective act of rebellion against God.

• From Noah’s drunkenness to the building of the Tower of Babel, and the state of humanity before God after the flood, all reveals a truth: if life issue from Adam is not resolved, sin reigns in his mortal body, causing him to obey the evil desires of his body, becoming a slave to sin, even to death (Romans 6:12-16).

• The main materials used to build the city and the tower were brick and bitumen. They used brick as stone and bitumen as mortar.

• After Adam sinned, the earth was cursed because of him (Genesis 3:17-18). They used the cursed clay to make bricks to build the city and the tower.

★ Solomon built the Temple, but he did not use “bricks” as materials; he used “stones.”

• Bricks are made by man; stones are made by God. The trees on the ground are the work of God (Genesis 1:12). Through tectonic shifts, plants, buried deep within the earth, are compressed over hundreds or thousands of years to form stones; that hardness is natural, not human doing.

• Bricks, however, come from the cursed earth and are made by man.

★ The church is not a physical building, but a spiritual temple.

• The church is the people whom Lord Jesus saved from sin (Matthew 1:21). They are the temple of God, the temple of the Holy Spirit, built by the Lord in three days with his life, and his body as the temple (John 2:19-21). Lord Jesus is the cornerstone of this temple.

• The Lord is a living stone, and those who believe in the Lord, coming before him, are also like living stones, being built into a spiritual temple (1 Peter 2:4-6).

• Church is God’s temple built with living stones, not bricks. Bricks are made by man; stones are from God.

→ God descended from heaven and confused people’s language.

God said, “Behold, they have become one people and speak one language. Now that they have begun to do these things, there will be nothing they will not be able to do.” (Genesis 11:6)

• Note the word “begin.” This word has two meanings in the original text: (1) to start; (2) to transgress, to forsake, to blaspheme. Meaning they no longer want God.

• “There will be nothing they will not be able to do.” Now that they are transgressing and forsaking God, there will be nothing they cannot do in the future.

• Before the flood, every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time (Genesis 6:5). After the flood, people did not remember God’s salvation, instead, they opposed God in their hearts.

• Therefore, God confused their languages, making them unable to understand one another, and scattered them across the whole earth. This was God limit or restrain God set for the arrogant people of this time, preventing them from remaining in a state of defiance, lest God destroy them at that time. God will not again use a flood to destroy people and the earth, for God has established a covenant with mankind. (Genesis 9:11)

• God granted men with abundant grace, tolerance and patience, yet people do not realize that God’s kindness leads to them towards repentance.

• The construction of the city and the tower ceased, and the city was named “Babel,” meaning “confusion.” On this confusion, Nimrod established his kingdom.

• Judging from the construction and cessation of the Tower of Babel, Nimrod was a powerful and strong man on earth, but the kingdom he initiated was one of “confusion and disorder,” which is not a good beginning.

From Babel to Babylon

• Babel is first mentioned in the Bible, telling us that Nimrod’s kingdom began with Babel, Erech, Akkad, and Calneh in the land of Shinar”. (Genesis 10:10).

• The second appearance of Babel shows us the confusion of “Babel” (Genesis 11:9).

• The third appearance becomes “Babylon” (2 Kings 17:24-30). Babel was no longer a city, but an empire. Micah 5:6 uses “the land of Nimrod” to represent Babylon.

→ After the flood, the people built the Tower of Babel and were punished by God.

• However, people of nowadays refuse to repent and continue to build the Tower of Babel in different forms. Even now, construction of the Tower of Babel can be seen everywhere, the work is faster and more chaotic, becoming the great city of Babylon, which will ultimately face God’s final judgment, and will disappear from the world.

→ From Babel to Babylon, from chaos to people making their own idols and worshipping idols, and finally to the destruction of Judah by Babylon, and so on so forth, these events are recorded in the Bible.

• God wants us to see the how the people after the flood strayed from God and rejected Him, and how the influence of Babylon (including a beautiful robe from Shinar ----Joshua 7:1, 21) on God’s people, and to the end the captivity of God’s people to Babylon.

→ Babylon represents the world after the flood where people did not remember God’s immortal grace, but instead sought their own fame.

★ In the New Testament, Babylon is frequently mentioned:

• “God remembered Babylon the Great” (Revelation 16:19);

• “for her sins are piled up to heaven and God has remembered her crimes” (Revelation 18:5);

• Babylon the Great “has become a home for demons and a haunt for every evil spirit, a haunt for every unclean and detestable bird” (Revelation 18:2);

• She “was the mother of prostitutes and of the abominations of the earth” (Revelation 17:5). Babylon the Great finally fell, was punished, and was thrown into the sea by a mighty angel, never to be seen again. (Revelation 18:1, 21)

→ The influence from Babel to Babylon on all people, especially God’s people, was profound and devastating.

• Therefore, God called out to his people from heaven: “Come out of her, my people, so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues” (Revelation 18:4).

► Babylon was located between the two rivers of the Euphrates and the Tigris, which were also known in ancient times as the Euphrates and the Hiddekel. The land between these two rivers was Shinar.

• Babylon, in the land of Shinar, had become the Babylonian Empire.

“In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it. And the Lord delivered Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand, along with some of the articles from the temple of God. These he carried off to the temple of his god in Babylonia (Hebrew: Shinar) and put in the treasure house of his god” (Daniel 1:1-2).

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