得窺天境
得窺天境，須看透紅塵萬丈；人神相通，隻憑借靈犀一縷。信靠耶穌，此外路路是絕望；堅定不移，萬裏迢迢聚天堂。
The locale of this story is the broad plain of lower Mesopotamia called Shinar. In this episode humanity is still a unified community. The people had plans to secure their own greatness, "to make a name for themselves." They were intent on creating their own city and culture. Building a tower that would reach heaven itself was their goal. Yahweh, however, took considerable offense at this.
Why should Yahweh get so upset? Surely these ancient people were not capable of building a skyscraper that could physically reach heaven and thereby challenge God. Whether or not they could actually do it, God took their activity as yet another attempt to grasp greatness, rather than waiting for God's blessing. God took offense at their plan because it seemed as if they were trying to become gods unto themselves by reaching heaven on their own.
God confounded their ability to communicate effectively. They could no longer cooperate, so their building plans had to be scrapped. The result was human disunity. The word "confuse" used here is the seed of another pun in the original text; the Hebrew balal contains a word-play on Babel.
Perhaps there is an additional level of meaning in the text. Babel is also the way the Hebrew language writes "Babylon." With this story we may be learning how and why Israel's great nemesis later in history, the Babylonian Empire, got its name. This story characterizes the great Babylon, even at the very beginning of history, as an evil city that by its primeval activities demonstrated its defiance of God.
The Tower of Babel story is a good example of how thematic analysis can be supported by literary analysis. New literary criticism, to be distinguished from classical source criticism, focuses on the structure and plot development of stories. Fokkelmann intensively studied the literary shape of the Babel episode. He shows it to have interweaving symmetrical structures, defined by repeated words and phrases. One such structure contains parallel action sets (see Table 1.2).
| Human Plans (1-4) | Divine Action (5-9) |
| One language, same vocabulary (1) | One people, one language (6) |
| Settled there (2) | Confuse language there (7) |
| Let us make bricks (3) | Let us go down (7) |
| Let us build a city (4) | Quit building the city (8) |
| Make a name (4) | Called its name (9) |
| Lest we be scattered around the earth (4) | YHWH scattered them around the earth (9) |
This is the effect of the literary structure. Humanity's attempt to go up is placed alongside God's going down. The language of the text highlights how God's actions are a response in kind to human efforts. For everything that humanity tried to do, God had a countermeasure. This reactive nature of God seems to characterize the Yahwist epic. It portrays God as ready to respond to the problem of human sin, both negatively (curses) and positively (blessings).
In addition to thematic and literary analysis, archaeology and cultural analysis can further increase our understanding of the text. The "tower with its top in the heavens," was a ziggurat, a stepped, pyramid-shaped structure that typically had a temple at the top. Remains of ziggurats have been found at the sites of ancient Mesopotamian cities, including Ur and Babylon (see Figure 1.4).
| Figure 1.4 Ziggurat at Ur The ziggurat of Ur-Nammu (Woolley 1939). |
The Tower of Babel story closes the Yahwist Primeval Story on a sad note. As a collection, the Primeval Story of the Yahwist deals with the relationship between God and humanity. Originally the relationship was close and pure. Then humans wanted to be gods themselves. This destroyed the intimacy of the divine-human relationship and had destructive effects on humanity and the larger created world. The episodes of the Yahwist core of the Primeval Story demonstrate the disastrous effects of human sin.
Tower of Babel Gallery, a collection of excavation photographs, reconstructions, and site diagrams of Mesopotamian ziggurats, including artistic renditions of the Tower of Babel.
Ziggurat. The term ziggurat comes from the Akkadian word ziqquratu meaning mountain peak. The reason ancient Mesopotamians built ziggurats derives from their understanding of religion and the gods. In ancient times mountains were often considered to be holy places where gods were thought to dwell. For example, Zeus dwelt on Mount Olympus, Baal on Mount Saphon, and Yahweh on Mount Sinai. Such mountains were thought to be contact points between heaven and earth. On the Mesopotamian plain there were no mountains. To remedy this, the inhabitants constructed artificial ones, ziggurats. One of the most famous ancient ziggurats was Etemenanki in Babylon, completed by Nebuchadnezzar around 600 B.C.E. According to Babylonian religion, Babylon was built by the gods and was the dwelling of Marduk. From there people could meet the gods. This is reflected in the authentic Akkadian name for Babylon. Derived from the Babylonian phrase bab-ilu, it literally means "gate of the gods." The Hebrew folk derivation of the name from "confuse" does not correctly reflect this true native meaning of the name Babylon. The Babylonians believed their capital city, through its ziggurat, gave them access to the heavens, as the meaning of the name Babylon suggests. The ziggurat itself embodied the concepts of pagan polytheism to the Israelites, as it developed in the early stages of city development in Mesopotamia (see Walton 1995). The ziggurat represented this affront to the true God and lies somewhere behind Israel's Tower of Babel story.
8 And YHWH scattered them from there around the earth. They quit building the city. 9 For that reason he called its name Babel because there YHWH confused the language of the entire earth, and from there YHWH scattered them around the earth. (11:8-9)
Divine Name. Notice how the name of God in this episode is now simply YHWH, and not YHWH Elohim as in earlier Yahwist stories. And who is the "us" in "Let us go down"? Possibly the Divine Council again (see the notes to Genesis 1:26).
5 YHWH came down to see the city and the tower which the men had built. 6 YHWH said, "If as one people with one language this is the beginning of what they can do, then nothing they plan will be impossible for them. 7 Let us go down and confuse their language there so no one can understand the other's language." (11:5-7)
1 The whole earth had one language and the same vocabulary. 2 When they left the east they found a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there. 3 They said to each other, "Let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly." So they had bricks for building blocks and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, "Let us build a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens. Let us make a name for ourselves so we will not be scattered around the earth." (11:1-4)
