VI

7-7-2012 Sorry it's been so long. I've been ill with a sinus infection. Genesis Chapter 10 At first glance this is pretty much a simple listing of geneologies of Noah's sons. But remember what happened with Noah when he was naked and his son Ham disrespected him? Noah put a curse on Ham and all his descendents. And Shem would be the father of the royal blood line that would go to Abraham, through whom the entire nation Israel would exist, thru David and on to Jesus. In reading chapter 10, I was reminded of this when I read about Ham>Cush>Nimrod (Babylon). Also Ham>Egypt>the Anamites and the Philistines, both of which were forever mentioned as bitter enemies of Israel. (more on that later) Also Ham>Canaan, from whom came the Hittites, Hivites, Jebusites, and Girgashites, all of whom mentioned time and time again as Israel's hated enemies. Also, as God scattered all of these sons of Noah and their descendents, the land of Canaan also included Sodom and Gomorrah. (More about that very soon) A father's blessing or curse to one of his sons was no small matter, and always had consequenses that stretched into infinite generations. Also stated in chapter 10.32 that these sons and their families would spread out and populate the earth after the flood. Chapter 11 - The Tower of Babel This story about the tower of Babel is very short and to the point, but also thought-provoking. When people start disregarding God and His purpose for us, man's brain, with the capacity which God gave it, can advance its thinking to as far as man's imagination can take it. When several or many minds gather, their thought resources can be pooled, and together we can do tremendous things. The one vehicle that makes this possible is language. Through our language can we communicate and recruit thoughts, discuss thoughts and ideas, make improvements on each others' thoughts and ideas, and it sometimes seems like the sky is the limit, which is true for Ham's generation just like it is for ours. Staggering are the thoughts about what we have accomplished with our minds, and we're not finished yet. But our minds can talk us into thinking that we're better than we are. This is disturbing to God. In 11.1 it says the whole earth was of one language. And they moved and spread out as the population grew. Many gathered in what would become Babylonia. This region of Mesopotamia was somewhat flat and had no stones, with which to build. No problem. These people figured out how to make bricks, bake them for strength and as a result, they were stronger than stones, and much easier to contruct with. Stones were irregular in shape and size. Bricks were uniform in size and shape. vss 3,4 - They wanted to do something spectacular. Why? It says in vs 4 "to make a name for ourselves". What a red flag! Man was created to fellowship with God and worship Him. These people, because of their accomplishments, started to worship themselves and thier own intellect, totaly disregarding God and His pupose for them. Today it is called humanism. Another phrase in vs 4: "otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth" They wanted to stay together. They were comfy and did not want their lives to be changed from outside influences. There was strength in unity (which is true). Also a very high tower would strenghten them against approaching enemies and I would think the plans included the tower to serve as a fort also. This began peoples' dependance upon themselves, instead of depending on God. Am I reaching too far into this? I don't think so. Consider that this is very early in the History of civilization. Nowhere prior to this is mentioned anything about fortresses, etc. The only things that were "built" prior to this was an ark and an altar. vs 4 also says "a tower that reaches to the heavens" I have in the past heard that it was common knowledge that they wanted to build a tower up to God to meet Him in Heaven. I don't think that was the meaning of that phrase. The phrase "into the heavens, as used in Deuteronomy, was used as a figure of speech for a very tall building (like our sky-scrapers) or anything else to describe extremely high. It is still used some today. God's judgement: vs 7 - Let Us (note the word "us" again) go downand confuse their language. (Babel in Hebrew means to mix or confuse) I don't know how many languages He made in that rather large group. But I do know that people would speak until they started recognizing what someone else was saying. Thus groups would naturally be formed into like languages, and all the groups would stay together and move away from the other groups, thus the scattering took place. It says over the face of the whole earth. Let's start briefly considering this to be scattering into the far-reaching continents. These people were no doubt the earliest ancestors of the American Indian, the Africans, and the Orientals, just to name a few, all adapting to the land on which they settled. Food for some very deep thought. I'll pick up on verse 10 tomorrow.