Text and context: As Gen 2:7 and 2:18, 20-23 complementarily unveil the making of man and woman briefly overviewed in 1:26-27, so the Babel incident of 11:1-9 peers into the past, providing an etiology of how the dispersal of the nations of chapter 10 came about, when (11:1): “the whole earth was of one language (‘lip’)”.1 Language was the Babel builders’ social mortar. In 10:10, Babel heads a list of cities and is said to be the ‘beginning’ of Nimrod’s kingdom. The new concept of ‘kingdom’ emerges and by implication Nimrod becomes the first king. His attitude is not godly; enthronement in Babel, this divinely judged ‘there’, is proof.
My diagram identifies an overall scene-setting in Gen 11 of a negative ‘there’ to a positive ‘there’2; between what happens in Shinar at Babel versus Abram’s arrival in Haran. Reading the Bible holistically shows the (designed) creation of counterpoint in this context.
Terms within this ‘there’ framework set up a significant contrast, or opposition, between Babel (Babylon) and the ‘City of God’.
With Hebraic punning they occur in language about “the place God has chosen to put His name there” (Deut 12:5ff; 1 Kgs 14:21). The man-built heavenward Babel-‘there’ is a counterfeit, or inversion, of the heavenly, set-on-a-mountain-top, city, to be called ‘Yahweh is there’ (Ezek 48:35). This is Zion and Jerusalem. In this there, Divine unity will be manifested (Cf. “Song of Ascents” Pss 132:5, 13-17, and 133). In that day, in “a pure language”, God’s “name will be call[ed] upon, to serve Him with one consent” (Zeph 3:9).
Abram in the Haran-there introduces one who was ‘looking for a city whose builder and maker is God’ (Heb 11:10); a city to come (Heb 13:14); made without hands; not ‘here and now’. With clean hands and a pure heart Abraham and his seed, which is Christ, will be able to enter Zion, the city of God, and ascend into the hill of Yahweh (Ps 24:3-4).
So, Babylon and Jerusalem are set in contrast and contestation. See the cultic ‘high hills’ in Israel (Babylonish ‘theres’) versus God’s chosen place in Ezek 20:28, 40. But, ‘Babylon the Great’ is judged with ultimate finality (Rev 17). The holy city New Jerusalem, the Lamb’s wife, those with the Father’s name in their foreheads, descends and unites with him on Mount Zion (Rev 14:1; 21:2).
Notes
D. I. Block in “The Role of Language in Ancient Israelite Perceptions of National Identity”, JBL (1984): 335 cites an ancient Babel-like parallel in a Sumerian text, mentioning one (“harmony-tongued”) universal language before Enki, leader of the gods: “changed the speech . . . of man that had been one” (lines 154-156).
R. P. Gordon Holy Land, Holy City: Sacred Geography and the Interpretation of the Bible. Carlisle and Waynesboro, GA: Paternoster Press, (2004): 40, re Psa 48: (v. 7[6]) notices that “The use of the adverb ‘there’ may imply something more definite than mere cultic re-enactment.” He notes Psa 76:3-4 (2-3)’s juxtaposition of Zion and there.
Map of David’s Time in Exile