Let Us Make A Name For Ourselves

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.” 

Here in Genesis 11, the ambition of man soars to new heights (literally). You would have thought that humanity would have learned its lesson from the destructive flood of Gen. 7:11 – 8:13. God destroyed humanity universally saving only Noah and his family, precisely because man’s every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually (Gen. 6:5). We know the answer to this. It is the sin of man. We are all born in sin. We are sinners by nature. It is what we do naturally. We sin because we are sinners. There is no sin that is acceptable to God. All sin merits punishment and God has decreed such punishment. God is never unjust. He is perfectly just. He deals with sin justly. We should not be surprised by the Flood of Noah.

We should not be surprised to find that God punishes nations for their sins. Israel and Judah are prime examples of that. God sent each of them into captivity (Israel in 722 BC under the Assyrians and Judah in 586 BC under the Babylonians). God also punished the Assyrians and the Babylonians for their sin. We must not be surprised that our own country is declining. It is declining because all nations decline.

All nations sin. There has never been a nation that has not sinned. Even Israel in the Old Testament is rebuked constantly by God for her idolatrous and immoral inclinations and practices. There are too many Christians today, who have blurred the lines between political parties and morality and thus find themselves surprised and/or shocked at recent election results. Christians must understand fundamentally that they do not have access to a Christian party over against a non-Christian party. One may be more evil than the other in terms of degree, but both are evil in practice.

Everybody is in the business of making a name for himself. That’s what Genesis 11 is all about: naked, raw ambition fueled by independence from any authority or accountability. Utilizing religion and business, these individuals manifest their displeasure with life and their desires for autonomy. This is what politics always does. Even Caesar in the 1st century understood these mechanics. And to back up these ambitions you need a military machine to enforce them.

It was Nimrod in Gen. 10:8 who was described as the first mighty man on the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord (10:9) who extended his ruthless power and domination through cities, the first of which was Babel. He was also responsible for building and establishing Nineveh – the same Nineveh that, centuries later, the prophet Jonah would urge to repent lest God destroy them (Jonah 1:2; 3:2 – 5). They repented at the preaching of Jonah. One hundred and fifty years later, they were destroyed by the Babylonians (as Nahum the prophet predicts).

Great nations rise and fall. It may take centuries but it will happen. There is only one kingdom that is unshakeable and that is the kingdom of our Lord (Heb. 12:28 – see also Dan. 2:44 – 45; 7:13, 14, 18, 21, 22, 27).

The events of Gen. 11 may have taken place during the larger scheme of things in Gen. 10. The reason for this might be indicated in Gen. 10:25, because of what Scripture says regarding Peleg – “…in his days the earth was divided.” Babel’s problem was that a unified humanity (something humanity still strives after), was utilizing all of its resources to establish a city that was the antithesis of what God desired and intended: a city to dominate the world, and a tower to promote their man-made religion. Here are a people bent on promoting themselves above all authority, carving out their own destiny. Sound familiar. No reference to God.

Babel is all about human independence and self-autonomy. This simply means that man reserved authority to himself. Why should they need God when they have sufficient and excellent technology (they are prepared to build a tower to heaven itself – vs. 4). They are one nation, one people – strengthened by their social unity and self-confidence. God’s plan was that people should fill the earth. God told Adam in Gen. 1:28 – “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it…” In Gen. 9:1, God told Noah and his sons to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth…” Notice that the subduing mentioned in Gen. 1 is not mentioned now since the fear and dread of man would be upon every beast. Gen. 9:7 says, “be fruitful and multiply, teem on the earth and multiply in it.”

But what did the people at Babel desire? They had one language and the same words (Gen.11:1). They wanted to build a city and a tower lest they be dispersed over the face of the whole earth (vs. 4). God told them to spread out – they wanted to close up the ranks. Their engineering project was designed to prevent humanity from spreading out. What does this mean? This is nothing but leaving God out of everything so that they can dominate who and what they want. This is the highest form of self-interest.

Now let us affirm that God takes a deep interest in the plans of men. Gen. 11:5 says that God came down to check out the city and the tower. Not only that, but in vs. 6, God confirms the ambition of their hearts – this is only the beginning of what they will do. Not only that, but God also saw that nothing that they proposed to do would be impossible for them. They are fired up to do their thing. Nothing can stop them (except God). If God wants to stop a nation in its tracks – he can do it in the wink of an eye. “The nations are like a drop from a bucket and are accounted as dust on the scales” (Isa. 40:15). God takes note of a self-inflicted danger. God will always deal with a unified humanity arrayed against him. He will do it with individuals and he will do it with nations.

What does God do? He intervenes directly. He confuses their language. The one thing that unified them (language) is changed. They can no longer understand each other. Such a situation would make building impossible and harmonious living together impossible. You would have to find people who understood you, and what would that do? It would keep them together but separate them from others. So God established other peoples from one unified people simply by confusing their speech. The result of this is that everyone was scattered across the face of the earth (vs. 9). It was the Lord who had dispersed them.

The name “Babel” is linked with “Babylon.” Babylon is the pre-eminent example of human self-sufficiency fueled by power hungry ambition. Babylon seeks to dethrone God and make the world its own possession. Some see the usage of “Babylon” in the New Testament as a name for apostate Jerusalem (1 Pet. 5:13; Rev. 14:8; 16:19; 17:5; 18:2, 10, 21).

Why do men and women want to make a name for themselves? It is simply all about self. We desire praise and adoration, and thus if we can make a name for ourselves, others will think how great we are. God has consistently been reducing this kind of ambition, and will continue to do so. What should we do? Let our names perish so that the name of Jesus only maybe heard across the world. The only name that counts is his, and it will one day be confessed by all. All other names will be like the rubble of Babel.