Tower of Babel

It is Day 12 and I have continued with my reading! That might not sound like much, but reading the Bible in a year is a major undertaking and I hope I will succeed.

A few days ago I read Genesis 11 about the Tower of Babel. The tower was being built after the flood, after God had told people to scatter and populate the earth. The people say, "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."

The commentary in my Bible says, "This episode is significantly more important than its length suggests." (It is only nine verses long.) "It presents a unified humanity using all its resources to establish a city that is the antithesis of what God intended when he created the world. The tower is a symbol of human autonomy, and the city builders see themselves as determining and establishing their own destiny...The Babel enterprise is all about human independence and self-sufficiency apart from God. The builders believe that they have no need of God. Their technology and social unity give them confidence in their own ability..."

For those who don't know the end of the story, God confused their language, so they couldn't understand each other. Then he sent them on their way and they settled in other lands.

Now I was thinking about this story and remembering the huge structure in Dubai that is being built. And then, to my surprise, I found an article about it in the Sunday paper. The Dubai Burj Khalifa has been completed and is now the world's tallest building at 2,717 feet. Interestingly, people from other countries came to Dubai to build it. These people, Pakistani, Bengali, Indian and Chinese, have protested against human and civil rights violations while they worked on the tower. The article goes on to say that 85% of the population of Dubai is from somewhere else in the world.

So what does this all mean? One tower being built long ago by people who spoke the same language and didn't want to spread out as God wanted them to do. The Tower of Babel was most likely in Babylon, now Iraq. Not too far away is the tower in Dubai, built by people who had spread out to other lands, but then converged in this city of many languages to build. But human nature hasn't changed--the rebellion toward God and the desire to be independent from him. People are still very much impressed by their own technology and they still want to make a name for themselves.

"The arrogance of your heart has deceived you, you who live in the clefts of the rock, in the loftiness of your dwelling place, who say in your heart, 'who will bring me down to earth?' Though you build high like the eagle, though you set your nest among the stars, from there I will bring you down, declares the Lord." Obadiah 1:3,4.

What do you think?