Genesis 11
1 Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. 2 And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. 3 And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn bitumen for mortar. 4 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.” 5 And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. 6 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. 7 Come, let us go down and ther’re confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.” 8 So the LORD dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. 9 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. 10 These are the generations of Shem. When Shem was 100 years old, he fathered Arpachshad two years after the flood. 11 And Shem lived after he fathered Arpachshad 500 years and had other sons and daughters. 12 When Arpachshad had lived 35 years, he fathered Shelah. 13 And Arpachshad lived after he fathered Shelah 403 years and had other sons and daughters. 14 When Shelah had lived 30 years, he fathered Eber. 15 And Shelah lived after he fathered Eber 403 years and had other sons and daughters. 16 When Eber had lived 34 years, he fathered Peleg. 17 And Eber lived after he fathered Peleg 430 years and had other sons and daughters. 18 When Peleg had lived 30 years, he fathered Reu. 19 And Peleg lived after he fathered Reu 209 years and had other sons and daughters. 20 When Reu had lived 32 years, he fathered Serug. 21 And Reu lived after he fathered Serug 207 years and had other sons and daughters. 22 When Serug had lived 30 years, he fathered Nahor. 23 And Serug lived after he fathered Nahor 200 years and had other sons and daughters. 24 When Nahor had lived 29 years, he fathered Terah. 25 And Nahor lived after he fathered Terah 119 years and had other sons and daughters. 26 When Terah had lived 70 years, he fathered Abram, Nahor, and Haran. 27 Now these are the generations of Terah. Terah fathered Abram, Nahor, and Haran; and Haran fathered Lot. 28 Haran died in the presence of his father Terah in the land of his kindred, in Ur of the Chaldeans. 29 And Abram and Nahor took wives. The name of Abram’s wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor’s wife, Milcah, the daughter of Haran the father of Milcah and Iscah. 30 Now Sarai was barren; she had no child. 31 Terah took Abram his son and Lot the son of Haran, his grandson, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram’s wife, and they went forth together from Ur of the Chaldeans to go into the land of Canaan, but when they came to Haran, they settled there. 32 The days of Terah were 205 years, and Terah died in Haran. (Genesis 11, ESV Bible)
1 Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. (Genesis 11:1, ESV Bible)
One Language
The Torah uses two different words to indicate a human language: lip (safah, שָׂפָה) and tongue (lashon, לָשׁוֹן). In the Hebrew idiom, to say that a person "speaks in tongues" means that he speaks multiple languages. The Hebrew of Genesis 11:1 literally says, "And it was that all the earth was one lip." If our apostolic writers selected that Hebrew term for language, Pentecostals today would advocate "speaking in lips."
According to some opinions, prior to the confusion of languages at the tower of Babel, all human beings spoke Hebrew, the language with which God created the heavens and the earth. Rabbinic literature calls Hebrew the tongue of angels and the "Holy Tongue." Hebrew is the "one tongue" as opposed to the "seventy tongues" of mankind:
If I speak with the tongues of men (the seventy languages) and of angels (Hebrew), but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. (I Corinthians 13:1)
Linguists count more than seventy spoken languages in the world (even after many languages have become extinct), and they assure us that Hebrew was not the mother tongue of humanity but is itself a descendant of an earlier Semitic language. Nevertheless, Judaism considers the Hebrew language holy. Hebrew is to Judaism what Latin is to the Roman Catholic Church and what Greek is to the Greek Orthodox Church. Hebrew is the language of the Torah, the language of the Scriptures, the language of the prayers, and (along with Aramaic) the language of the rabbis and our Master.
References
This section is from teachings from FFOZ Depths of the Torah, Book One.
3 And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn bitumen for mortar. (Genesis 11:3, ESV Bible)
Bricks
Sometime after the days of Noah, humanity settled in the fertile crescent of Mesopotamia, where they built cities, developed written language, and reached for the heavens. In the story of Genesis 11, mankind collaborates to build a great tower that they hope will reach to the very realm of God.
An old Jewish legend about the Tower of Babel reports that the people building the tower valued the bricks more than human lives. As the tower grew higher and higher, it took longer and longer to get a load of bricks to the top, where the construction was still advancing. Occasionally the workers would lose their footing and plummet to their deaths. Occasionally a brick would be dropped by one of the laborers. When the people below saw a person fall, they expressed no sympathy, but when they saw a brick fall to the ground they all wept because it would take so long to get another brick to the top to replace the one that fell.
This is the nature of blind ambition. When the project we are working on is more important than the people around us, things are out of balance. When spending time at the office (or the church) is more important than being home with the family, we are making the bricks of Babel.
References
This section is from teachings from FFOZ Unrolling the Scroll.
Babel
Nimrod ruled over a generation of united humanity, a universal empire in proto-Babylon. He created the original one world government. All nations spoke a single tongue and worked toward a single purpose. Under Nimrod's leadership, the people of mankind set out to build a tower. They had both religious and political motivations for raising a tower to heaven. They said, "Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name, otherwise we will be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth" (Genesis I1:4). They wanted to reach the immortal realm, and they wanted to establish a universal, capital city of mankind "otherwise we will be scattered." They called their political-religious capital of the world Babel.
The Torah hints that the etymology of Babel (בָּבֶל) is related to the Hebrew term for confusion (balal, בָּלַל):
Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the LORD confused (balal) the language of the whole earth. (Genesis 11:9)
Linguists point out another etymology behind the name. In some Semitic languages, the word babel could mean "Gate of God."
Since he first looked skyward at the night sky, man has desired to reach the heavens. The religions of Mesopotamia nurtured those astrological aspirations. The Mesopotamians built staged temples called ziggurats, towers reaching to the sky from which they worshiped the moon and their various gods. They built them from sun baked bricks. The pyramid-shaped ziggurats fose in receding tiers and reached high into the heavens. The Mesopota-milans believed that their towers were gateways to the realm of the gods.
Nimrod and the people of Babel seem to have been on a quest for immortality and divinity. They attempted to fulfill the serpent's commission to "be like God" by securing a place in the heavens.
Since the days of Nimrod and the tower of Babel, many empires have risen and attempted to reunite all mankind into a single nation and purpose under one divine god-man. Each empire spiritually derives from Babel. This partially explains why the apostles referred to the Roman Empire as "Babylon." The name "Babylon" symbolized the corrupt world-system-the empire with its ambitions, pride, and idolatry.
Like the coming kingdom of heaven, Babylon represents the unification of all mankind under a single authority. In that sense, Babylon represents a satanic version of the kingdom.
In the Messianic Era, all mankind will share the political/religious capital city of Jerusalem. Before Messianic Jerusalem can be established, the political/religious capital of Babylon must fall:
Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great! She has become a dwelling place of demons and a prison of every unclean spirit, and a prison of every unclean and hateful bird. (Revelation 18:2)
As the LORD observed man attempting to build a tower to the sky, He realized that they ultimately would succeed. He saw that "nothing will be impossible for them." In recent generations, humanity has begun to overcome the effects of the dispersion at Babel. Language barriers are vanishing as modern technology reunites the world and makes universal exchange a possibility. The Sumerians built towers to try to reach the moon. Several thousand years later, we have actually done it. Is human progress in science and technology bettering the world, or is it rebuilding Babylon?
References
This section is from teachings from FFOZ Depths of the Torah, Book One.
4 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.” (Genesis 11:4, ESV Bible)
Babel
Human beings have always yearned to reach the heavens. The original religions of Mesopotamia were astrological in their orientation. The Sumerians built staged temples, towers reaching to the sky, from which they worshiped the moon and their gods. The word Babel means "gate of God." The Tower of Babel was supposed to be a gateway to heaven. By securing a place in the heavens for himself, mankind sought to dislodge God. He strove to achieve his own divinity.
Things have not changed much. We still strive to make a name for ourselves. Men are still prone to building towers, whether they be successful careers, powerful positions, accumulations of wealth, or other self-serving ambitions. Most of a person's lifetime can be spent striving for prominence and a sense of accomplishment. Our motivations are not that different from those of the builders of Babel.
We tend to believe in the myth of success. We think that if we could only be successful in our next endeavor, we would be happy. Real happiness happens when we set aside our insatiable ambitions and recognize that God is God and we are not. He alone is sufficient to satisfy our souls. No amount of prestige and power can ever substitute for Him.
References
This section is from teachings from FFOZ Unrolling the Scroll.
Tower of the Antichrist
Just as the Torah contains shadows of the Messiah, it also contains shadows of the false messiah, the Antichrist. Nimrod was the first Antichrist. Nimrod was at war with God. He led people on a rebellion against the Almighty. The Hebrew letters of his name (נִמְרוֹד) can be read to mean, "We will rebel."
Although the Torah calls Nimrod "a mighty hunter before the LORD," Rashi explains this to mean that Nimrod hunted the souls of men and used his arguments and powers of persuasion to turn them "against the LORD." He was the prototype of Antichrist. He set himself up as a deity and designated a place for his worship.
Nimrod and his followers said, "Let us ascend and make war against God." Nimrod orchestrated the construction of the Tower of Babel as an incursion into heaven. Tradition says that he placed an image of himself atop the tower with a sword in his hand, as if he was thrusting it toward the LORD:
The apostasy comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, displaying himself as being God. (2 Thessalonians 2:3-4)
The sages say that Nimrod and his generation are precursors of the generation of Cog and Magog, In that day, the nations are in uproar and devise a foolish plan. The kings of the earth take a stand against the LORD and His Messiah, saying, "Let us tear their fetters apart and cast away their cords from us" (Psalm 2:3). They said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, and then let Him descend below, and we will go up to heaven, and if not, then we will do battle with Him.
And they said, "Come, we will build us a city and a tower, and the head of it shall come to the summit of the heavens; and we will make us an image to worship on the top of it, and put a sword in his hand to act against the [heavenly] armies of war, so that we will not be scattered on the face of the earth." (Genesis I1:4, Targum Pseudo-Yonatan)
References
This section is from teachings from FFOZ Shadows of Messiah, Book One.
7 Come, let us go down and ther’re confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.” (Genesis 11:7, ESV Bible)
Communication Problems
God put an end to the Tower of Babel project by confusing mankind's languages. No longer able to understand one another, they could not continue cooperating in the building project. In the future to come, God will reunite humankind in His kingdom. Rather than building monuments of human ambition and pride, we will serve God in unity. The prophet Zephaniah says that in that day all mankind will return to the use of a single language. The LORD will thereby reverse the confusion of the Tower of Babel:
For then I will give to the peoples [a pure language), that all of them may call on the name of the LORD, to serve Him shoulder to shoulder. (Zephaniah 3:9)
References
This section is from teachings from FFOZ Unrolling the Scroll.
The Dispersion
Exile and dispersion are two different things. The LORD frequently warned His people that, if they did not abide by His Torah, He would drive them out of the land of Israel (exile) and scatter them among the nations (dispersion). For example, the Torah says, "You will be torn from the land where you are entering to possess it. Moreover, the LORD will scatter you among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other end of the earth" (Deuteronomy 28:63-64). Exile and dispersion represent the opposite of the kingdom. The Messianic Era is a time of ingathering and return to the land.
God exiled Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, but He did not immediately disperse humanity. The story of Babel explains how the exiles were finally dispersed. Up until then, the human race remained clustered together in small pockets of civilization in the ancient Near East. Living together with a common language, they pooled their ingenuity and defiance, and they built a city and a tower.
The LORD descended from heaven to see the city and the tower that the human beings had made. He said, "Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. And this is what they began to do, and now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them" (Genesis 11:5-6).
The LORD addressed the seventy angels which stand before Him, saying, "Come, we will descend and we will confuse their language, so that a man will not understand the speech of his neighbor." The LORD descended and the seventy angels descended with him, each one corresponding to one of the seventy nations of humanity. The seventy angels are called princes, such as "the prince of the kingdom of Persia" (Daniel 10:13).
The seventy angels assigned languages to their corresponding nations. "One did not know what his neighbor was saying, so he slew him, and they ceased from building the city." The LORD dispersed the sons of men and scattered them across the face of the earth.
The kingdom of heaven will reverse the effects of exile and dispersion:
He confused their tongues so that one could not understand the tongue of his fellow. The first tongue they spoke was the holy tongue, and God created the world with that language. The Holy One, blessed be He, said, "In this present world, because of the evil inclination, my creatures have been split, divided into seventy tongues. However, in the world to come, they will all be united to call on my name and to serve me, as it says [in Zephaniah 3:9], 'For then I will give to the peoples purified lips, that all of them may call on the name of the LORD, to serve Him shoulder to shoulder." (Midrash Tanchuma, Noach 19)
The miracle of Pentecost transcended the language barriers created at Babel when the apostles miraculously proclaimed the gospel in all languages. The gospel in all languages reverses the curse and summons humanity to return and reunite under the kingdom of heaven. Though the LORD dispersed the generation of the flood to the four corners of the earth, the Messiah comes to gather His elect into His kingdom.
References
This section is from teachings from FFOZ Shadows of Messiah, Book One.
8 So the LORD dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. (Genesis 11:8, ESV Bible)
Humanists, Naturalists, and Monkeys
The Talmud relates that some of those building the tower to the sky intended to take up residence in heaven. They believed that by exalting themselves to that high place, men could become gods. They did not believe in the LORD; they believed that human beings were destined to become their own gods. Others at Babel wanted to reach heaven to wage war on God and dethrone Him. They hated God and desired to see Him vanquished. They saw no need for God or any place for Him in the natural order.
The Talmud says that, in addition to confusing the languages and dispersing mankind, God made some of them into apes and monkeys... and that's where primates come from. Of course, that's not true, but the monkey-element creates irony for the modern reader. More than fifteen hundred years after the rabbis in Babylon composed the Talmud, humanists and naturalists appeared with the idea that mankind evolved from monkeys. The Talmud says the opposite: Monkeys evolved from naturalists and humanists.
References
This section is from teachings from FFOZ Depths of the Torah, Book One and from teachings from FFOZ The Beginning of Wisdom, Book One.
True Godliness
We are living in the days of Noah. The days of the coming of the Son of Man will be like the days of Noah. If so, we should ask ourselves, "Am I part of the insane human race (folly), or am I like Noah (wisdom), who walked with God?" As we learned before, to walk with God involves constantly exercising these three things: the love of God, the fear of God, and cleaving to God.
The eighteenth-century German pietist, Gerhard Tersteegan, wanted to understand better what it means to walk with God. In his discourse "True Godliness," Tersteegan attempts to define true godliness by eliminating things that it cannot be. He determines that it cannot be "anything which the ungodly and the hypocrite can have in common." Therefore, it does not consist of refraining from vices, coarse language, or social taboos. It is not attained through affecting a particular disposition or attending to outward ceremonies, religious disciplines, rituals, and functions. Nor can it consist of anything that some godly men have possessed but others have not, such as the ability to prophesy, perform miracles, or shine light into divine mysteries. Nor can it consist of things that all the godly possess but not at all times, such as spiritual consolations, inner promptings, moments of spiritual bliss, rapture in prayer, divine communication, ecstatic moments of enthusiasm, or spiritual inspiration and excitement. Having thus eliminated all aspects of religious duty and experience, he asks, "Wherein does true godliness consist?" He goes on to suggest that true godliness consists of being aware that you are standing in the presence of God. He describes an inward knowledge and vision of God:
That the whole heart is, as it were, blissfully taken captive, and entirely made willing to detach and turn away, by thorough self-denial, all its desire, pleasure, joy, and delight, and its whole affection from itself, all that is not God, and to direct and fix it all upon this alone all-worthy object, to love him solely, and to cleave unto him all the heart, and soul, and mind, and strength, and to love nothing outside of him, which cannot be truly loved in him. The ungodly person is one who is detached from God and cleaves to himself and the creature; a godly man is one who is detached from himself and the creature, and adheres to God with all affection. His whole heart says to all that is not God, "I am not for you, and you are not for me. You are not the object of my desire, I can do without you all; God alone is all sufficient. He is my treasure. He is my all. He is the center of my affections. In him alone I have enough." (Tersteegan, True Godliness)
Tersteegan's words sound lovely. But how does one cleave continually to God in such radical abandon? He continues:
(The truly godly person] embraces this lovely being with all the powers of his love, and seeks in him alone pleasure, joy, consolation, and delight. He cleaves unto him in his inmost soul. He immerses himself in him, until at length, (after every intervention and partition of sin and self-love is cleared away, by the exercise of great fidelity and patient endurance, and through the powerful operation of the grace of God,) he becomes entirely one with God, or one spirit with him (cf. I Corinthians 6:17).
This, taken together, is otherwise called in scripture, "Walking before God, or in his presence," and is in reality nothing else than true godliness, the true service of God, or real religion, in which Enoch, Noah, Abraham, and all the saints and prophets of the Old Testament, as well as Jesus Christ, our Savior and Forerunner, together with the apostles, primitive Christians, and all his true followers, in every age, have served God. (Tersteegan, True Godliness)
According to Tersteegan, true godliness consists of "walking with God" or being "in His presence." It's not about any particular religious behavior, habit of study, observance of laws, social deportment, disposition, or specific acts of merit and charity. Instead, all those things are the fruit of the essential thing, which is to constantly cleave to the presence of God, keeping Him ever fixed before us, in every circumstance, in every moment, continually shedding the self in the divine presence of the Most High. This is what it means to walk with God.
References
This section is from teachings from FFOZ The Beginning of Wisdom, Book One.
Baby Steps
This is our purpose in life. It was our Master's mission, and it's the mission He has entrusted to us. There is a flood coming. Not a flood of water, but a flood just the same. God is looking for people who walk with Him as Noah did.
This is the reason you are here. God created you to walk with Him. When God created the world, He concealed His presence. That's why we call this the world of concealment. But He did not leave the world utterly devoid of revelation. He created man to bear His image, to represent Him within the world. Now that's our job.
We don't have to be part of the insanity. We can step outside of time and the illusory world of self and impermanence and cleave to the infinite through our Master Yeshua by practicing the presence of God. Like anything else you want to accomplish in life, it just needs to become a habit. Use your imagination and remember that God is always present. He is always near; He is always with you; He is always loving you; He is always drawing you closer; He is always whispering to your soul-even now, at this very moment, as you read these words. If you can picture that, believe that, know that, and maybe even feel it, you're already walking with God. Now stay on the path:
He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6:8)
References
This section is from teachings from FFOZ The Beginning of Wisdom, Book One.
9 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. (Genesis 11:9, ESV Bible)
The Kingdom
God descended to confuse the languages and disperse the peoples. He divided the people of Babel into seventy nations, and He split the single one tongue into seventy tongues.
The revelation of the Torah and the good news of the Messianic Era gather scattered humanity back together into one kingdom and one tongue. Tradition says that when God spoke the Torah at Mount Sinai, He spoke it in the seventy languages of mankind so that all mankind might hear and understand His summons. In the days of the apostles, on the anniversary of that miracle, the Spirit of God again transcended the language barriers created at Babel when the apostles miraculously proclaimed the gospel in all languages. The gospel in all languages reverses the curse and summons humanity to return and reunite under the kingdom of heaven. Though the LORD dispersed the generation of the flood to the four corners of the earth, the Messiah comes to gather His elect into His kingdom. The holy city, Messianic Jerusalem takes the place of the unholy tower of Babel. In the Messianic Era, all nations will speak the holy tongue of Hebrew: "For then I will give to the peoples purified lip, that all of them may call on the hame of the LORD, to serve Him shoulder to shoulder" (Zephaniah 3:9).
References
This section is from teachings from FFOZ Depths of the Torah, Book One.
10 These are the generations of Shem. When Shem was 100 years old, he fathered Arpachshad two years after the flood. (Genesis 11:10, ESV Bible)
The Line of Abram
Noah's son Shem fathered a line of descendants that are referred to in the modern world as the Semitic peoples. The name Shem is at the root of the word Semite. As we read the genealogy of Shem, we find a man named Eber. The descendants of Eber are referred to as the Hebrew people. The name Eber is at the root of the word Hebrew.
Until now, the Bible has spoken about humanity in broad terms. Now the Torah focuses in on a single family, the family of Abraham, a Semite and a Hebrew who had an amazing encounter with God. But that's another story.
References
This section is from teachings from FFOZ Unrolling the Scroll.