What Can Christians Today Learn from the Tower of Babel?
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The first few chapters of Genesis share fascinating accounts about the beginning of all things, from perfect creation to how the world has become so broken. Looking at the first eleven chapters leading up to Abraham, these fantastical stories sound like fairy tales at times. Scholars have argued how much is true and how much is more fiction meant to share a deeper message.
The Tower of Babel account appears within these chapters. After the flood and before God calls Abraham and Sarah, the Bible tells us about this tower and God’s response. It may be an odd story, but the Scripture included it for a reason. What can we learn from the Tower of Babel?
What Is the Story of the Tower of Babel?
Genesis 11:1-9 tells the story of the Tower of Babel. After the worldwide Flood, Noah’s family began to multiply, and all the people on Earth shared the same language. As people migrated east, they settled in a plain in Shinar, in Mesopotamia. The people united and decided to build a city and tower that would reach the heavens, or the sky. They wanted to make a name for themselves and keep from being scattered over the earth. This directly opposed God’s command for humanity to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (Genesis 9:1). Instead of obediently spreading across the world, their pride and rebellion sought unity and fame through their own ability and success after building the tower.
While they constructed the tower, God saw them and recognized their sinful hearts. He noted their unity and shared language, declaring how this allowed them to pursue their own thoughts. However, since the tower and city defied God as sovereign and his righteous design, the Lord acted. He confused their language. They no longer understood each other, which ended the construction, and the people actually did scatter. The name “Babel” became associated with confusion and division, as the word sounds similar to the Hebrew word for “confuse.”
The story contains several important messages. First, it illustrates the dangers of human pride. Like the Devil, we often attempt to elevate ourselves above God’s authority. The people’s desire to “make a name” for themselves reveals the human self-centered heart, seeking glory apart from God. Second, the Tower of Babel shows how God remains sovereign over human plans. Even though the people rebelled and defied God, the Lord’s will prevailed as he scattered them across the earth. Rebellion happens and becomes destructive, but it can’t ultimately stop God’s purposes.
Third, like much of Genesis, the story explains why people live so scattered, divided, and why so many different languages exist. Human pride and rebellion exists at the root of all such confusion and division. Thankfully, the next passages deal with God’s solution, the Abrahamic covenant.
Is the Tower of Babel Literal or Figurative?
The Tower of Babel story reads like an ancient myth or fairy tale, many of them symbolic and answering why the world is the way it is. Why are people so divided? Why are there different languages? This fantastical story explains it. This similarity to other cultural myths, obvious fictions, has led some to believe the Tower of Babel never truly happened. The question of whether this story is literal or figurative has intrigued biblical scholars for centuries.
Some scholars posit the Tower of Babel should be understood as a figurative or symbolic narrative rather than a literal historic event. In this view, the theological message becomes the main point, and the tower represents human ambition and pride. God’s intervention symbolizes his authority over all creation and human activity.
Those who side with a figurative reading point to the boarder literary context of Genesis, which can be described as “primeval history,” which includes stories explaining the creation of the world, the Fall, the Flood, and the Tower of Babel. These stories give explanations for the state of the world and weave theological truths about God, humanity, and the consequences of sin. Here, the tower becomes a metaphor for humanity’s vain attempts to find paradise. Building a tower to the sky is a ridiculous and impossible notion, as is the human rebellion against the Creator, designed to fail.
From the literal perspective, the Bible describes an actual event. The descendants of Noah would have all spoken the same language, and those who look at this story literally point to the text’s specific details. The mention of Shinar, a real geographical region in Mesopotamia, adds historical context. Archaeologists have also identified structures in the area like ziggurats, stepped towers, which may be related to the Tower of Babel. Generally, cultural myths include fantastical people, animals, and places. The Tower of Babel story has real places and connections.
Many stories beyond Genesis 1-11 sound like fantasy. God parted the Red Sea. A boy kills a giant. God comes in human form, dies, and rises again. The Bible is filled with true, historical events that also have theological implications. This describes the whole of Scripture. God supernaturally acts within history toward a redemptive end. Faith leads to miracle and transcends the brokenness of this world time and again.
Just because a historical narrative also contains theological truth doesn’t make it a fiction. We would have to reject the whole of Scripture. At the same time, our own lives become fruitless. In the church, as we tell our own God stories, they are filled with miracle and struggle and mystery. Do we discount our own testimonies because God acted supernaturally within them? God created us to live with meaning and purpose.
Whether interpreted literally or figuratively, the story highlights the danger of human hubris and how we should obey God’s will.
How Does the Tower of Babel Connect with the Rest of the Bible?
The original Bible didn’t have chapters or verses, added a couple centuries ago to help us find passages, so we find what happens next after the Tower of Babel instructive. God considered Babel’s way of reaching the heavens foolish enough to scatter them. Yet God is redemptive and generous. He did give a way to reach him and the life we long for.
Immediately following Babel’s judgment, the Bible introduces the Abrahamic Covenant (Genesis 12). Through Abraham and Sarah, God plans to restore broken humanity and bring all nations back together again. God called Abraham out of his homeland and promised to bless him, make his name great, and through his progeny bless all the people of the earth. Where Babel sought to make their own name great, God promises to make Abraham’s name great. He calls Abraham out (a type of scattering).
We should also note God called a man and wife to have a child to spark his redemptive story. This hearkens back to the Lord’s original design with Adam and Eve multiplying and filling the earth with descendants. God’s redemptive plan always includes the family, his idea from the start.
Through Abraham’s offspring, particularly Jesus (Galatians 3:16), God would bless every nation on the earth. Jesus gave a commission as such before his ascension — spread the Good News to every people and make disciples, more multiplication.
The fulfillment begins to take shape at Pentecost. In Acts 2, after Jesus ascended, the Holy Spirit descended upon the disciples gathered in Jerusalem. The apostles, empowered by the Spirit, start supernaturally speaking in different languages, and people from other nations and languages understand the disciples proclaiming the mighty works of God. After a sermon from Peter, thousands from other nations repent unto Christ. This directly mirrors and reverses the curse at Babel. Unlike the Tower of Babel, where God brought confusion and division, Pentecost brought unity and community through the Gospel. God uses the languages he used as division to now bring people together through the Holy Spirit and repentance unto Christ.
What Can Christians Today Learn from the Tower of Babel?
The Tower of Babel teaches several key lessons for us today.
The people at Babel attempted to make a name for themselves, unifying in their own ability and achievements. They sought to reach God by their own efforts. But God intervened and ended their selfish project. We should first learn our own efforts can’t bring us to God. True unity, purpose, and fulfillment aren’t found in human achievement but in God’s will. Pride leads to separation from God. Repentance includes the recognition we need to rely on God’s strength rather that our own ability.
The unity that humans failed to achieve at Babel is restored in the church, where we are united under Christ as the head. In Ephesians 4:15-16 Paul describes Jesus as the head of the church, the body, where “the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.” Our unity rests not on our strength but the Holy Spirit’s work. As Paul explains in 1 Corinthians 12:12-13, “we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body — whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free — and we were all give the one Spirit to drink.”
The diversity of the church (with its different gifts, languages, and cultures) reflects the depth of God’s creation. Our unity must be within something transcendent, in Christ alone, not our own striving. Here we find the combination of unity and diversity the world longs for but seeks in its own power.
The book of Revelation offers an important vision of restored unity in heaven, where diversity appears unified as people from every nation, tribe, and language give glory to God. Revelation 7:9-10 reveals a great multitude standing before the throne of God “from every nation, tribe, people, and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice: ‘Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!’”
At Babel, language led to division. We see how through the Gospel and the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, God redeems the languages of the nations to declare his mighty works. In Revelation, John’s vision from heaven shows us how language becomes a unified worship, a further fulfillment of Pentecost. The nations, in their own tongues, glorify God, demonstrating how unity and diversity exist together in perfect harmony under God’s rule. Through following Christ, submitting our lives unto the Father, and acting in the power of the Holy Spirit, we will enjoy the ultimate fulfillment of what the people at Babel sought to achieve — unity leading to the heavens.
Peace.
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