The Humanist Hive: The Folly of Babel Text: Genesis 11:1-9
Introduction: Two Ways to Build
There are only two ways for mankind to be unified. There is God's way, and there is man's way, and they are ever at war. God's way is unity in Christ, a glorious, variegated unity of diverse peoples, tribes, and tongues, all gathered by the gospel under the Lordship of Jesus. It is a unity from the top down, a gift of grace from a sovereign God. Man's way is the way of Babel. It is a coerced, monochrome, totalitarian unity, built from the bottom up. It is the dream of every tyrant, every utopian, every godless revolutionary from Nimrod to Marx to the globalists at Davos. It is the religion of humanism, the worship of collective man, and its foundational sacrament is the centralized state.
The story of the Tower of Babel is not a quaint little tale for Sunday School felt boards about why we have different languages. It is a foundational text for all of political theory. It is the archetypal story of rebellious, apostate man seeking to build his kingdom without God and, in fact, against God. After the flood, God had given a clear command to Noah and his sons: "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth" (Gen. 9:1). This was a command to scatter, to decentralize, to fill the whole earth with the glory of God through families, clans, and tribes. But men are ever prone to disobey clear commands. Instead of scattering in faith, they huddled together in fear. Instead of seeking God's name, they sought to make a name for themselves.
This is the spirit of our age. We are living in a generation of frantic Babel-builders. They want a one-world government, a one-world economy, a one-world religion. They want to erase all the distinctions God has made, whether between nations, or sexes, or good and evil. They believe that if they can just get all of humanity into one great, centralized, technological hive, they can finally achieve heaven on earth. But what they are actually building is a gateway to Hell. The story of Babel shows us the blueprint of their rebellion, the arrogance of their ambition, and the swift, decisive, and merciful judgment of God.
The Text
Now the whole earth had the same language and the same words. And it happened as they journeyed east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. Then they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and they had tar for mortar. And 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, lest we be scattered over the face of the whole earth.” Then Yahweh came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. And Yahweh said, “Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. And this is what they have begun to do. So now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them. Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another’s language.” So Yahweh scattered them from there over the face of the whole earth; and they stopped building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel, because there Yahweh confused the language of the whole earth; and from there Yahweh scattered them over the face of the whole earth.
(Genesis 11:1-9 LSB)
The Uniformity of Rebellion (v. 1-3)
The account begins by setting the stage for this great act of consolidated rebellion.
"Now the whole earth had the same language and the same words. And it happened as they journeyed east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. Then they said to one another, 'Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly.' And they had brick for stone, and they had tar for mortar." (Genesis 11:1-3)
The unity described here is not, in itself, a bad thing. A common language is a tool, and like any tool, it can be used for good or for ill. But here, this linguistic unity becomes the engine of a unified rebellion. They are of "one lip" and "one word," which points not just to a common vocabulary but to a common purpose, a shared confession of rebellion. They are all saying the same thing, and what they are saying is profoundly anti-God.
They journey east, which in Scripture is often the direction of moving away from God's presence. Adam and Eve were exiled east of Eden. Cain went east after murdering his brother. Lot journeyed east toward Sodom. And here, mankind journeys east and settles in Shinar, the land that would become Babylon, the historic seat of empire and idolatry. They "settled there." This is the first act of direct disobedience. God said scatter and fill; they said settle and consolidate.
Then comes their technological hubris. "Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly." This is not just a note on ancient construction techniques. Stone was the natural building material God provided. Brick was man-made. They are rejecting God's provision for their own ingenuity. They are proud of their technology. They are building a man-made world with man-made materials according to a man-made plan. This is the essence of secularism: the attempt to build a world as though God does not exist and has provided nothing.
The Humanist Manifesto (v. 4)
Verse 4 is the heart of the matter. It is the mission statement of apostate humanity.
"And 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, lest we be scattered over the face of the whole earth.'" (Genesis 11:4)
Notice the fourfold ambition. First, "let us build for ourselves a city." A city represents a consolidated culture, a center of power and influence. They want to create their own society, with its own laws, its own values, its own gods. This is the birth of the secular state, the polis as the center of man's ultimate allegiance.
Second, "and a tower whose top will reach into heaven." This was likely a ziggurat, a man-made mountain intended as a gateway to the divine realm on man's terms. This is not about building a tall skyscraper. This is an act of religious rebellion. They are not seeking God in humility; they are attempting to storm heaven, to control access to the divine, to become as gods. It is the architectural embodiment of the serpent's lie in the garden.
Third, "and let us make for ourselves a name." This is the central motive: glory. They do not want to glorify God's name; they want to make their own name great. This is the sin of pride in its purest form. It is the desire for autonomous significance. It is a direct contrast to what God will do in the very next chapter, when He finds a man named Abram and says, "I will make your name great" (Gen. 12:2). Man can either try to seize a name for himself, or he can receive a name from God as a gift of grace. The first path leads to Babel, to confusion and ruin. The second path leads to blessing and salvation.
Fourth, "lest we be scattered." Here they state their rebellion explicitly. Their entire project is motivated by a fear-driven disobedience to God's cultural mandate. God said go, they said stay. God said scatter, they said centralize. They believed that their safety and security were found in their collective unity, in the strength of their hive, rather than in obedience to their Creator. This is the lie at the heart of all statism: that the centralized collective can save you.
The Divine Inspection (v. 5-7)
Man builds his proud tower, and God responds not with panic, but with what we can only describe as a kind of divine irony.
"Then Yahweh came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. And Yahweh said, 'Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. And this is what they have begun to do. So now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them. Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another’s language.'" (Genesis 11:5-7)
The language here is anthropomorphic and dripping with irony. Man builds a tower to reach heaven, and God has to "come down" just to see it. Their grand project, so impressive in their own eyes, is a microscopic speck to the transcendent Lord of the universe. He is not threatened. He is not worried. He stoops to observe their little mud-pie fortifications.
But He does take their rebellion seriously. God's assessment in verse 6 is crucial. "Behold, they are one people... and this is what they have begun to do. So now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them." This is not a compliment to their raw potential. It is a diagnosis of their depravity. When fallen men are perfectly unified in their rebellion, their capacity for evil is unlimited. A unified, apostate humanity is a terrifying thing. This is why God's subsequent judgment is an act of profound mercy. By scattering them, He is putting the brakes on the runaway train of human evil. He is diversifying wickedness, making it harder for sin to consolidate its power. A world of competing tyrants is far better than a world with one, unopposed, global tyrant.
And so, the Trinity consults. "Come, let Us go down." Just as in creation ("Let Us make man in Our image," Gen. 1:26), so in this act of de-creation, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit act in unified counsel. The judgment is not an angry outburst, but a deliberate, divine decision. They will not destroy the people, as in the flood. Instead, they will dismantle their godless unity by confusing their language. The very tool of their unified rebellion, their "one lip," will become the instrument of their division.
Judgment, Mercy, and Scattering (v. 8-9)
The execution of God's judgment is swift and effective.
"So Yahweh scattered them from there over the face of the whole earth; and they stopped building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel, because there Yahweh confused the language of the whole earth; and from there Yahweh scattered them over the face of the whole earth." (Genesis 11:8-9)
What man feared and rebelled against, God brought about by His sovereign decree. They built in order not to be scattered, and so God scattered them. The result of their quest for a great name was to receive a name of infamy: Babel, which sounds like the Hebrew for "confused." Their project of unity ended in babble and confusion. Their city of man was left a half-finished monument to the folly of human pride.
This is always the result of humanistic, utopian projects. They promise heaven on earth and deliver a totalitarian hell. They promise unity and create division. They promise to make man's name great and they cover him with shame and confusion. All attempts to build the kingdom of man in opposition to the kingdom of God will end in the rubble of Babel.
From Babel to Pentecost
But the story does not end here. The scattering at Babel is not God's final word to the nations. It sets the stage for God's true plan of unification, a plan that reverses the curse of Babel not by human effort, but by divine grace.
At Babel, God came down in judgment to scatter the nations. But centuries later, God the Son came down in incarnation, not to judge but to save. He came to die on a cross, to bear the confusion and the penalty of our sin, in order to gather a new humanity to Himself.
And the great reversal of Babel is the day of Pentecost. At Babel, a proud humanity speaking one language was confused and scattered into many. At Pentecost, a humble group of disciples were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in many languages, and the result was that men from every nation were gathered and unified by the proclamation of the mighty works of God (Acts 2:1-11). At Babel, the different languages scattered. At Pentecost, the different languages gathered.
The true unity of mankind is not found in a brick-and-mortar tower, a political project, or a globalist agenda. The true unity of mankind is found only in the person and work of Jesus Christ. He is the cornerstone of a new city, the New Jerusalem, which comes down from God out of heaven. He is the one who gives us a new name, a name written in the Lamb's book of life. The Great Commission is the anti-Babel mandate. We are to "go and make disciples of all nations," teaching them to obey everything Christ commanded. We are now to scatter in obedience, filling the earth not with our own glory, but with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord.
The choice before us is the same as it has always been. We can either join the frantic, godless project of Babel, trying to build a secular utopia that will inevitably end in confusion and ruin. Or we can, by faith, become citizens of that heavenly city, whose builder and maker is God. We can seek to make a name for ourselves, or we can confess the only name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved: the name of Jesus Christ.