God: Divider Of People (Genesis 11:1-9)

Now the whole earth had one language and few words. And as men migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly." And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. 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, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth." And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the sons of men had built. And the LORD said, "Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; and nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down, and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another's speech." So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore its name was called Ba'bel, 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. -Genesis 11:1-9 RSV

 This story is funny for many reasons. First off, we now know that languages have 'evolved', and are constantly changing as time passes -- like how we know languages like English, French, Spanish, and German all originated from the same source. Perhaps people in the past didn't have access to the historical records we do now, they saw all of these complex languages and found it much easier to rationalize it by coming to the conclusion that God did it (the parallels with evolution are great).

""Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; and nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down, and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another's speech."" This shows that an all-loving god does not want his creation to succeed, he sees people building a tower, and he swoops down with some other beings (other gods? angels?) and destroys what unites these people, and their society -- why? because god does not want them to build a tower -- makes perfect sense Christians -- such a great explanation for why we have so many different languages.

The biblical lesson here is people can accomplish great things and can unite as one -- God just doesn't want them to. This little story is true in a metaphorical sense, God is the great divider of people, and that appears to be the underlying message -- he confuses our minds and divides our people.