Can you imagine, building a tower that stretches all the way to heaven?
I’m doing my Sunday Brunch post a little differently today. I’m posting a Bible verse, with my random thoughts and questions. My random thoughts/questions are in parenthesis.
Genesis 11:1-9 NIV:
The Tower of Babel
11 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2 As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.
3 They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”
(I find it hard to imagine grown people actually thinking they can build a tower that reaches to the heavens! I’m wondering if, back then, people weren’t conscious of boundaries since they didn’t have the luxury of science and technology? Did they look in the sky, see the clouds and not fathom how far away those clouds were? Did they think building to the clouds was the same as building to the heavens? Were the clouds much closer back then? Was heaven closer? If somebody, today, were to say they were building a tower to reach the moon – we’d be like, NO WAY! Just wondering what was going through people’s minds back then when they decided to build this tower.)
5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. 6 The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”
(I’m assuming the Lord confused their language first, before they scattered? Did they wake up one morning and nobody understood one another? I’m wondering if families were broken, separated, because of a sudden language barrier? I guess the Lord did not want them to build this tower because the entire task was impossible, and besides, that would take massive attention from the Lord, people would be more focused on building this impossible tower, instead of focusing on God. )
8 So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. (I’m wondering how the Lord managed to scatter everybody. I’m assuming the people who spoke the same language, gathered together and migrated to a different part of the world?) 9 That is why it was called Babel—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.
So, can you imagine, waking up one morning, and a whole city of people not understanding one another?