A Name for Ourselves

Speaker A: 00:00:04

They're trying to contain the God of creation, the one who spoke and brought everything into existence, the one of whom it is said Earth is His footstool. What is a tower built on a footstool? To the one who rests his feet there,

The Deep Waters Way: Where Scripture, theology, and transformation meet.

Welcome once again to the Deep Waters Way. I'm Ray Cooper and it's good to have you back again. Today we're embarking on a new five part series called What's in a Name?

Where we're going to explore some of the names of God used in scripture.

Now, this won't be an exhaustive list, but it will highlight what we see of God's nature, His character, and his heart for humanity through his historic interactions with humanity as revealed to us in scripture. Something you need to realize as we start — a name is more than a label, it is also an expression of one's character and reputation.

In this series, I don't just want you to see how God has revealed Himself to us, I want you to also see the contrast between that and our own attempts to reach God.

So in this first episode, we're going to be looking back to a time when humanity sought to manufacture our own reputation and make a name for ourselves. Before we get into that though, don't forget hit, subscribe or follow wherever you're listening so that you never miss an episode.

And then if you would, head over to Apple Podcasts or Podchaser and leave a rating or a review. It only takes a moment and it genuinely helps the show out. Now grab a cup of coffee or hot tea and settle in.

It's time to slip the moorings and head for the deep waters. Have you ever noticed how we as human beings are obsessed with leaving our mark in the world?

How we have this desire to be remembered and even sometimes link our self worth to the impact that we have on the world at large? We want our names remembered. We want them put on buildings, written in books, passed around like some sort of currency. We want a reputation.

And sometimes we're willing to spend whatever resources we have to make that happen. Our series that we're starting today, What's in a Name? Opens with humanity pondering those exact ideas of making our names known.

Even if it means making a name that is a character, a reputation for ourselves.

We find ourselves today in the opening verses of Genesis 11, and there we read of the Tower of Babel and humanity's attempt to rebel against God's direct command to fill the earth. Before we look at that passage, though, we need to back up to chapter 10 briefly, because there we meet a man named Nimrod.

Nimrod is a descendant of Ham, Noah's son through Cush, and there is not much said about him in Scripture. In fact, he's only mentioned twice here in Genesis 10, and then again in 1 Chronicles 1:10.

And here what is said about him is that he is the first empire builder. He is said to have founded the cities of Babel and Erech, Accad and Calneh in Shinar.

And then we're told as well, he was a mighty man and a mighty hunter before the Lord. Now, that phrase itself deserves a moment to unpack, so let's look at that. But let's start with before the Lord.

This is a phrase that has a little bit of ambiguity to how it is understood. It can be a qualitative evaluation, that is, it can be a measure of Nimrod's greatness that he was so great.

He was even considered great by God's standard.

But another way of understanding it, and this has a lot of historical support through a number of different commentators, is that before the Lord is the equivalent of saying in the Lord's face. In other words, he was mighty in defiance of God. Now, this is not a point of ambiguity that has to be either or both can be true.

It could indeed be true that Nimrod was mighty by God's standard, and that he also used that might in defiance of God.

And that's where the first part of the phrase starts to come into play, because I truly lean toward Nimrod being defiant before God because of what the early part of that phrase tells us. His very name, according to both David Guzik and Adam Clarke, means he rebelled or let us rebel.

And he's described in the Targums, that is the Aramaic translations and interpretations of the Hebrew scriptures, as a man of sin and a murderer of innocence. Likewise, the word translated here in the ESV as mighty man is rendered in various other translations as valiant warrior or fearless leader.

The Hebrew word, though, is gibbor. And I want you to hang on to that word, because in a couple of weeks we're going to come back to it. But here's what I want you to see about it today.

Gibbor is the same word used to describe the Rephaim in Genesis 6. Now, that passage is fairly enigmatic in and of itself, and there's considerable discussion around what it means.

However, whatever it actually means, this much is clear. The Rephaim were considered mighty ones, and they rebelled against God.

In fact, Dr. Michael Heiser describes Genesis 6 as the second of three great rebellions against God described in the book of Genesis, and it is perpetrated by beings described as gibborim, mighty ones. And the third of those great rebellions, Genesis 11, where we have an act potentially perpetrated by one described as gibbor.

And that's what we see in Genesis 10 and 11. After the flood, we have a man who rises up and is described as the first gibbor, the mighty one on the earth, and he's the founder of the very place we're looking at today, Babel. But you need to understand this about Nimrod.

While he may be described as a mighty one, and there may well be a memory back to the days of the gibborim and the Rephaim in his title, Nimrod is but a pale reflection, and neither he nor they hold a candle to the gibbor we're going to be discussing in a few weeks. But that brings us back now to Genesis 11, verses 1 and 2. Tell us now, the whole earth had one language and the same words.

And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. Let me make a quick note here. The ESV, King James Version, and ISV, among others, have this translated as the people migrated from the East.

Some other translations, notably the New English Translation, the NIV, the NASB, and a few others, render this as to the east, or some variation of that. Now, at first it might seem strange to say a word can be translated two completely opposite ways.

However, it does occasionally happen, particularly with slang words or words indicating motion or direction. Greek, for instance, uses the same word for to come and to go, and it's the context that it occurs in that tells you which one is meant.

There is real discussion regarding how this word should be translated out of Hebrew and into English, because there are clear cases of it being used both ways to mean toward or from the east, and both honestly can fit the narrative taking place here.

However, I think based on the grounds that we're about to look at both theologically and geographically, the case for from the east appears to me to be stronger. Let's start with geography so that we can ground ourselves. To start with, Shinar is the plain between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

How did the people get here? Well, we have to go back to the flood and Noah to answer that. Genesis 8:4 tells us that Noah's ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat.

People often read that and think specifically of Mount Ararat. But that is just one mountain within a high range of mountains.

In eastern Türkiye, both the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers start here before flowing south through modern Iraq and into the Persian Gulf. To the east of the Tigris is the Zagros Mountains, and to the west of the Euphrates is largely desert.

It's likely that as the population began to grow after the flood, people would have followed the Tigris river valley south through eastern Türkiye and modern Iraq into the lower elevation Zagros Mountains and the foothills of that region. From there, looking west, they would have seen the wide open, fertile plain the Bible calls Shinar.

And as we saw in verse two, they chose to settle there. Verses three and four then tell us. 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 dispersed over the face of the whole earth. It seems somewhat random and maybe even a little unpretentious. Let's make bricks and burn them thoroughly.

What's being described here though, tells us a little bit about the area. It tells us there were not a lot of stones.

In fact, to bring in stones, they would have had to have been carried from the Zagros Mountains to the east. But there was clay for making bricks. And if you take clay bricks and put them in a kiln and dry them, they become hard bricks.

That's what's being conveyed by burning them thoroughly here, baking them until all the moisture is gone and they're like rocks. And so verse three continues that by doing this they had bricks for stone. And then it tells us they had bitumen, that is tar for mortar.

This not only would hold the clay bricks together, it would actually make them waterproof. This is insurance against a flood.

So either they're preparing for what naturally happens when you build next to a river, or there are trust issues about God's promise to not destroy the world with a flood again. And then verse four tells us of the plan to make a city, Babel, founded by our guy Nimrod, and a tower.

And here, if the language before sounded unpretentious, this sounds totally preposterous. It's certainly an arrogant, self aggrandizing statement.

Don't misunderstand. The people don't literally believe that they can build a tower that physically reaches the heavens. What they desire is a place where they can meet with God and make themselves into a great name, having a great reputation.

They want to do something so grand, God has to take notice. Now, they've heard the stories passed down from Noah. They heard of the time when God walked in the cool of the evening with Adam.

They've heard of a garden and how humanity was cast out and moved to the east of the garden. And now they have this lovely plain between two rivers and think this is the place.

This is the place where God can come down and meet with us once more. And if we make this place our home, we don't have to scatter across the face of the earth.

We can live right here with our city and our tower and our God. Now, so far, we've just looked at what the text has told us, but let's stop and think about that for a moment.

Let's decipher some of what may be going on here. And I say may, because this is not clearly stated in scripture. It comes from what we know about ancient near east religion, from archaeology.

And I'm making some suppositions here, some conjectures based on what the text does tell us. Looking out to the west from those eastern mountains, the people see a plain and a river bordering it.

They know that when God drove Adam and Eve from the garden, they were driven east. This is a very common statement in scripture that seems to often describe moving away from the presence of God.

Adam and Eve were expelled to the east. Cain moved eastward after killing Abel. And so the natural thought would be that Eden, the garden of God, was toward the west.

West also is the direction of the setting sun, a hint of a memory with God walking with Adam in the garden in the cool of the evening. Archaeology tells us that Babylonian and Mesopotamian towers were what we call ziggurats, stepped towers.

And the archaeology also tells us that these towers served as places of worship. But archaeology also says that the steps of the ziggurat weren't barren.

Each step, of course, was smaller than the one before it, which left room around the edge. And these broad ledges were often planted with lush gardens.

And some scholars even believe that the famous hanging gardens of Babylon may have been planted on a terraced tower, much like a ziggurat. At the same time, ancient religions often associated mountains and gardens as the places where gods dwelt.

Dr. Michael Heiser explains in his book The Unseen Realm. Mountains were remote and forbidding, the perfect places for gods to get away from pesky humans.

Mountain peaks touched the Heavens, which was obviously the domain of gods. Likewise, gardens were seen as the homes of the gods because of their lushness and abundance.

Especially remarkable in an arid land where water is precious. And this isn't just reserved for pagan religions. Even in the Bible we see mountains associated with the worship of God.

He tells Abraham to go to the region of Moriah and worship on the mountain he will be shown. And then the giving of the law to Moses occurred at a mountain and the temple itself was built on a mountain.

And of course Eden is a garden that Genesis tells us was planted by God where he placed Adam and would meet with him. Now my personal opinion is that this religious cultural memory of gods and mountains and gardens comes from the passed down stories of Eden.

And that what we see in what we call mythologies is the time and sin corrupted human attempt to recreate the narrative preserved in Genesis 1 and 2. So why are the people building the tower to heaven?

To recreate a garden and a mountain where God can dwell, where God can be enticed to come down once more and meet with people. And by doing so, the people will make themselves a great name, a reputation of great renown.

And because God is among them, they won't have to disperse across the land. But all of this flies in the face of what God has commanded.

After the flood, God commanded Noah in Genesis 9:1 to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. In other words, the people were meant to be dispersed over the face of the whole earth. And the people are choosing to defy God.

But they aren't just choosing to defy him. They're actually trying to manipulate God to force him to do their bidding.

They are attempting to recreate Eden, paradise, the home of God, the place where God met with man. And they're trying to force that meeting, that relationship on their terms. This of course, as we know from our own lives, is a recipe for disaster.

Whenever we seek to do our own thing in the face of God's direct command, it is what the Bible describes as high-handed sin. It is us shaking our fists in God's face and saying, I'll do it my way. Now you may say, hold on a minute, I'm not doing that. But let me ask you this.

If you are following your way and not God's, who is really God in your life? If God has given you a direct, unambiguous command and you choose the opposite, what are you really saying to God?

And when you choose to make a name for yourself rather than take on his, what are you really choosing? That's exactly what's happening here.

This is open rebellion and it's on display even in the very words the people say, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth. And then you add to that the manipulation, the attempt to bend God to human will. This is the essence of magic.

It is religion treated as transaction to the exclusion of relationship.

It is what happens when we see the cyclical nature of life, the seasons, the activities, the rising and setting of the sun and the phases of the moon, and assume that history operates the same way.

We begin to treat everything around us, including our relationship with God, as something to be controlled, as something to be operated like a well constructed machine. But history is not like nature. The Bible makes it clear. All of history and creation has a course, a trajectory.

It has a beginning and it has an ending, a fulfillment that has already been declared by God. That's not fatalism. It's not an excuse to say, well, everything's going to work out in the end, so I don't have to do anything. It's simply the truth.

God set creation in motion with a desired outcome. And everything he does within history moves us closer to his desired outcome.

And just as history is not cyclical, God can't be manipulated, harnessed, or controlled. Dr. John Oswalt, one of my professors, has stated that Nadab and Abihu are the perfect demonstration of this. These are Aaron's sons who were priests, and they brought strange or unauthorized fire into the tabernacle. They sought to do things according to their own design rather than the way God had instructed, and punishment ensued. See, Scripture is clear.

God cannot be manipulated this way. Magic says, if I do the right things and say the right words, if I offer the right gifts, I can dictate the outcome. I can be the one in charge.

Taken to its conclusion, whether it's ever actually thought or said. Transactional ritual says, in effect, I am God and all must bow to my will. That even applies when what we desire is the right thing.

And that's something to understand here. Yes, the people were openly rebellious. Yes, they sought to recreate Eden by their own design and effort.

But what they were ultimately seeking was restored communion with God. But they thought that could happen on their terms. So they built a tower, a substitute mountain, and they sought to bring God down.

And indeed, the text tells us that God did come down. But this is very much a case of be careful what you wish for, because God didn't come down as a result of their manipulation.

Scripture makes it clear he came down according to his own will, with a plan already established. Look at verses five through nine. And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the children of man 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 so that they may not understand one another's speech. So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel.

Because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth. And from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth.

God came down to see this tower they had built, not because he had been summoned, but because he chose to. And notice the subtle irony here. Their tower, meant to be great and reach up to God, goes nowhere. It's so insignificant in God's eyes that he has to come down to look at it. And is it any wonder they're trying to contain the God of creation?

The one who spoke and brought everything into existence, the one of whom it is said Earth is His footstool. What is a tower built on a footstool to the one who rests his feet there? Notice as well, God comes with a plan.

It's a plan that forces obedience to his earlier command to fill the earth. He says he will confuse their language so that they're unable to communicate with one another.

And verse 8 then tells us directly that the Lord dispersed them over the earth.

And God says that what the people have done on the plain of Shinar is just the beginning and that nothing they choose to do will be beyond them, because they all have one language. When we look at history, we see this actually played out.

We see the awesome, sometimes marvelous, sometimes horrendous things that human beings have been able to accomplish. And we note as well how much more quickly things have advanced in modern times. But this isn't about God wanting to stop humanity from developing.

It is about ensuring all the right pieces are in place at just the right time for God's redemptive covenant plan. Remember, history is moving towards a fulfillment. And that fulfillment is most visible in the incarnation of the Son, in the fullness of time.

Through him we have redemption and adoption into the family of God, where we are given his name and shaped to be like him through the work of the Holy Spirit given at Pentecost. And in fact, it is at Pentecost that we see Babel undone.

Acts 2 tells us that when Pentecost, that is a Jewish festival occurring 50 days after Passover came, the Holy Spirit descended on the disciples who were gathered in prayer, and that they began to preach the Gospel in the languages of the people gathered in Jerusalem. But it wasn't just the languages that were unified, if even briefly.

When you look at Luke's description of that event, he lists some of the nations of the people gathered. And one of the things that we often miss is there is a similarity between this list given by Luke and the table of nations given in Genesis 10.

The list of Noah's descendants in Genesis 10 is meant to show the spreading of people across the world after the events of Babel. It lists 70 nations or people groups.

Acts 2, in contrast, shows people from some of those same lands and regions, with Luke saying as well, people from every nation under heaven, all being brought back to a single Jerusalem, not Babylon, God's choice, not man's. And for a brief moment they are able to hear and the disciples able to speak in the once divided languages.

In other words, Pentecost is the unwinding of the division introduced at Babel. It marks the beginning of the unification of God's people as one.

And that's why Paul can tell the believers in Galatia that in Christ there is no Jew or Greek, free or slave, male or female. It isn't that the differences are erased. It's that they no longer divide us in Christ. And notice one more thing here before we close.

Throughout this episode, I've used the word God to talk about the divine being acting in the Babel story. But if you look at your Bible, it has the Lord in all capital letters.

That is a convention used by Bible publishers to render one of the names of God, his covenant name, Yahweh. The fact that this is used here means that even in this situation, God is acting according to covenant purposes, even if the people don't realize it.

Now, we'll talk more about the name Yahweh in the next episode, so make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss it. And if this episode has spoken to you in any way. If you've enjoyed anything about this episode, please share it with a friend.

That is the absolute best way to help this show grow. Thank you for joining me once again. Now it's time to slip the moorings and head for the deep waters.

The Deep Waters Way: Where Scripture, theology and transformation meet.