Reading and summarizing/reviewing The Unseen Battle: Spiritual Warfare, the Three Rebellions, and Christ’s Victory Over Dark Powers by Joel Muddamalle.
Chapter 4 – The Third Rebellion at Babel
After the flood, God reiterates to Noah the command He first gave to Adam and Eve: be fruitful and multiply. The command to Noah’s descendents in Genesis 9:9 seems to be universal, not relegated to just flood survivors in the Near East. Muddammalle mentions the use of the word erets for “earth” throughout Genesis is meant as local geography and not the entire globe, but that doesn’t limit the “one language” of Genesis 11:1 to just the Near East. He cites scholar Victor Hamilton in explaining that the “one language” was simply a language everyone was able to speak, used across national and cultural boundaries, which doesn’t exclude the existence of local languages spoken within a particular nation.
The resulting nations moved “from the east” and settled on the Shinar plains. Some translations mistskenly have it the oppsite: they travel “eastward,” but the distinction is rather important to the Old Testament’s audience. Genesis 3:24 has the angel with the flaming sword on the eastern side of Eden, and by traveling “from the east”, AKA: westward, their goal was to return to Eden itself. Armed with a common language, the settlers were able to start building a “name for themselves,” despite God explicitly telling them to spread outward across the Earth. Since plains aren’t known for having mountains, the settlers would have to build their own mountains if they needed to commune with the divine realm. Recall that mountains were the turf of divine beings, and an artificial mountain came in the form of a ziggurat. In Hebrew, the word is migdal, literally “tower.” The migdalah/ziggurats were meant to give a place for a deity to meet with humanity, so they could ply him for favor. This is what the Tower of Babel was.
We know the overall results: God casts judgement on the settlers for ignoring His mandate to spread across the world, for trying to return to Eden on their own terms, for endeavoring to make themselves famous instead of giving God the glory. God confuses their common language and scatters them. But the seeds planted in this punishment set the stage for God to act in a big way later on. Fast foward, way forward, to the Pentecost narrative in the second chapter of Acts. Not only are the effects of Babel’s punishment of humanity reversed, but God saw fit to incorporate a few twists. One might expect God to miraculously imbue the people gathered in the upper room with a common language, contra Babel, but they retained the language of their home nations while supernaturally making sense of the unfamiliar language they were hearing. How language was manipulated really wasn’t the point, it was a common understanding. Pentecost was also another step in the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham, that his descendents would be a blessing to all nations. God was making the next move in this cosmic conflict by bringing back the disinherited nations birthed after Babel, and He used His people thousands of years later, exiled and scattered among those nations, to spread His good news and glory.
Despite the Babel story’s notoriety with modern audiences, there are two vital points we miss without the ancient Hebrew’s viewpoint installed into our thinking. Here we see, like in the creation of man narrative, God using the collective “let us” language when He declares punishment on the Babel settlers, mirroring the “let us” the rebellious human settlers use in Genesis 11:3. Commentaries might say He is addressing the angels—a much easier sell than the Genesis 1 use, but the Hebrew would have known He was talking to the divine council, not “messengers.” The job of casting judgment and executing on it is too much of an important act to not include His advisors on it.
The other vital point in the Babel story is related to the divine council Muddamalle sumamrized in chapter 2. We don’t see this clue materialize until Deuteronomy 32, where Moses recites his parting words in song form to all of Israel, speaking of dividing and apportioning the nations “according to the number of the sons of God,” in verse 7. Without getting into the scholarly minutae, many modern translations say “sons of Israel” in the closing part of the verse. Looking at what we have with the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS), the more likely and more sensible translation is “sons of God.” Combining 32’s reference with Deuteronomy 4 and other parts of scripture, we see a clearer picture of what Babel produced: God turning over the nations to some members of His divine household for safekeeping and guarding, while He keeps a special portion for Himself, the nation of Israel. The language used in Deuteronomy 32 and 4 for this apportioning of land is used frequently elsewhere in scripture to refer to the passing down of assets from a patricarch to his sons, as an inheritance to watch over and maintain.
We aren’t necessarily told the why or when, but the sons of God watching over the disinherited nation became corrupt, demanded the worship of the people over which they ruled, and failed to govern them properly. The aftereffects of Babel, combined with the other two rebellions—humanity’s at Eden and the Watchers and their progeny, the nephilim—set the stage for the events of the rest of the Old Testament and God’s promised deliverance from these three rebellions.