Tower of Babel | Christian Art Appreciation 3.2

Genesis 10 succinctly explains the movement of Noah's progeny over many generations as they dispersed around the world becoming different nations. The text reiterates three times that each group had its own language. Then two verses after the last refrain about individual languages, Genesis 11 seems to contradict Genesis 10 by beginning, now the whole world had one language and one common speech. Rather than a contradiction, this highlights a shift in culture. The story of Babel is often interpreted as a demonstration of the sin of hubris, the human attempt to be like God through human effort. Genesis says that they said, come let us build ourselves a city with a tower that reaches to the heavens that we may make a name for ourselves. This interpretation assumes that they means humanity and all those involved desired to end nomadic life and build a city with a skyscraper. First century Jewish Roman historian Josephus adds that Nimrod ordered the construction of the tower to withstand another worldwide flood. God sees what they are doing and says, if as one people speaking the same language they have been able to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. So God scatters them and confuses their language again. In this interpretation, God knows man will be God-like if they can work together. Why is God trying to keep them from being God-like? What? There's one God, yeah? Now, I think what this interpretation, the idea that we are translating the story that humankind could ever achieve what God achieved, is a little bit hubris in itself. So Dr. Ari Lamb interprets the story of Babel as the perils of empire or kingship, a repeating theme in the Bible. Lamb bases his interpretation on key analysis of Hebrew words used in Genesis 11 and compares their use elsewhere in the Bible. Let's start with the word impossible. The Hebrew word for impossible is ybetzer and its root word appears nearly 40 times and almost never means impossible. It usually means fortified, as with the large cities fortified up to heaven, which draws comparison between Babel and the kingdoms of Canaan. The translation for they propose or ybetzu connotes plotting and is usually used to pervert justice. So instead of God worrying that mankind can do anything if they work together, God is concerned that the society is plotting to build itself on injustice. Let's look at how. They say, come let us make bricks. The Hebrew word for come is havah and the word for make bricks is nilbena levinam. Havah only appears eight times outside the Babel story and six of those times it means to give. Only twice does it mean come, here and in the opening of Exodus when the pharaoh argues for enslaving the Israelites. Come or havah, let us deal shrewdly with them. The phrase make bricks consists of a verb noun pair that only appears in Genesis 11 and in Exodus when pharaoh forced slaves to find their own raw materials. You shall no longer give the people straw to make bricks. These words draw a between the enslavement of people in Egypt and Babel. Kiln technology dates to about 6000 BCE and it has changed very little since then. First clay soil, sand and water and organic material is mixed. Before the modern era this required a lot of muscle power. Then the mixture was patted down in molds, a task typically done by children. After the bricks dried they were removed from the mold and fired in a kiln. If you look closely at the brick structures in Charleston you will see little kid handprints. The exploitation of children and adult slaves in brick making continues today. Oppressive building practices using forced labor and violence occur in Egypt in the building of Solomon's projects and at Babel. Okay so has anyone been to McLeod Plantation or Boone Hall Plantation? Have you seen the fingerprints? McLeod points them out if you go on the tour there. But if you go pretty much anywhere in Charleston that has a brick building and you have a lot of free time you can look closely and find little handprints. All right one more point here. So the collective voice used in the transition of the Babel story let us and for ourselves gives us the impression of a unified voice as does God's response as if one people speaking. But Ari Lamb points out that Am Eshad appears only one other place in the Bible in the negotiations between Jacob's sons and Hamar the Hivite after Hamar's son the prince Shechem raped Jacob's daughter Dinah. Jacob's sons deceitfully accept marriage if the Hivite men agree to circumcision. Then they say we will dwell with you and become one people after the circumcision Jacob's sons massacre all the Hivites. If we apply the meaning here to Babel the idea of Am Eshad does not conjure a vision of people coming together for great civic project but a forced unification under duress stemming from an act of violence and ending with an act of treachery. Lamb concludes Babel seems great on the surface a society where everyone comes together to build something but beneath the surface it's dystopia it's Egypt it's Shechem it's Canaan. Why is it so bad? Well because what Genesis 11 is narrating for us is the birth of empire. Babel is not a free society in which people come together to build a tower it's an empire the first of its kind.