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After the great flood of Noah, God reestab­­lished “the world that then existed” out of the floodwaters (see 2 Peter 3:5–6). Even though man’s heart remained as evil as before (Gen. 6:5; 8:21), God determined not to destroy the earth again by flood and expressed this decree to all creation as a common-grace covenant (8:21–9:17). Then He repeated the dominion mandate to the human race as at the beginning: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (9:1–3, 7; see 1:28).

In the Genesis narrative of these two worlds, preflood and postflood, the focus is on names. Genesis 5 gives the names of the generations from Adam to Noah and his three sons (preflood). Likewise, all of Genesis 10 gives names of the three sons of Noah (Shem, Ham, and Japheth) and their descendants (postflood). By the end of Genesis 10, there is a focus on Shem and his line, which is then picked up in Genesis 11:10–30, moving to Terah and to his sons, and especially to Abram, who carries on the story from that point, beginning in Genesis 12.

The postflood story of Noah’s unfolding family line, however, is interrupted by the Tower of Babel episode (11:1–9). This well-known and vivid story certainly captures the imagination, but by intruding on the narrative of Noah to Abram, it cries out for explanation. Is this simply the story of how the one human language became many? Genesis 11:1–9 is indeed a pause in the action and explains language dispersal, but we are already told this more or less in 10:5, 20, and 31. Accordingly, there must be more to the story of Babel, which we now look into by focusing on the dominion mandate and how it plays out on “a plain in the land of Shinar” (11:2).

The story of Abram also concerned a name-making, but from the Lord this time: “I will bless you and make your name great” (Gen. 12:2).

In 11:1–9, there are certain repeated issues that draw our attention. The first is dispersal (vv. 4, 8–9). The renewed dominion mandate states clearly that human beings after the flood were to fruitfully teem on the whole earth and fill it (9:1, 7). Dominion over creation was implied when God delivered living creatures and plant life into human hands (vv. 2–3), which requires responsible cultivation and husbandry as well as development of technology and tools to accomplish this. Certain places such as the plains of Shinar in the southern part of Mesopotamia (11:2; see 10:10; 14:1; Dan. 1:1–2), for example, housed predatory animals such as lions, panthers, and hyenas that made building walls and cities necessary for protection.

Therefore, building a city (Gen. 11:4) seems perfectly consistent with the dominion mandate. The development of baked bricks with tar-based mortar (“bitumen”) produced an exceptionally strong building material equivalent to stone (v. 3) that is still in evidence today in places such as the Ziggurat of Ur. This kind of technological advance seems to be just what the Lord intended for humans in the dominion mandate. But there’s a catch in what the people say in Genesis 11:4: “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.”

There are two important things to note here. The city builders in Shinar were using their first-class technology of baked bricks with bitumen mortar not only for protection and community but to resist fulfilling the dominion mandate of filling the earth. This was not just a city but a citadel of man in defiance of God’s beneficent ordinance to fruitfully fill the earth. Instead of moving out, they attempted to move up with “a tower with its top in the heavens.”

We will return to the tower of this city of man in a moment, but first notice in Genesis 11:4 that this city’s purpose was to “make a name” for its builders. We have already observed that names fill the early chapters of Genesis. Notably in connection with the city in Shinar, the first human city builder in Genesis was Cain, who named the city after his son Enoch, from whose line came boastful and murderous Lamech (4:17–24). We are likewise told in 10:10 that Nimrod from the line of Ham (and relative to accursed Canaan) began his kingdom in “Babel . . . in the land of Shinar,” where the account in Genesis 11:1–9 takes place.


Genesis, like other places in the Hebrew Scriptures, is filled with wordplay. In line with this, Noah blessed his eldest son, saying: “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem” (9:26). The Hebrew word for “name” is shem. The Hamite inhabitants of the city in Shinar wanted to make a shem, a name, for themselves rather than looking to “the God of Shem” and calling on His name (4:26; 12:8; 13:4). They hunkered down and united for the honor of their own name in the city of their own making, so that they might resist the mandate of God to exercise dominion over the whole earth for His glory.

The city in the plain of Shinar was marked by this famous tower, which was probably designed not as a watchtower but as a ziggurat with steps built on one or more sides. We know from later pagan evidence that this design was not so that man might ascend into heaven (as is often thought) but to provide a ladder for the gods to descend from heaven. This makes the Genesis 11:1–9 narrative all the more poignant. The city builders worked to avoid being “dispersed over the face of the whole earth” (v. 4), and then they made a high tower for their gods to descend. When the living God saw their artifices, He did indeed descend (v. 7), but then He Himself named the city of these united shem-makers: “Babel” (“confusion”; v. 9). Thus their misguided union was dissolved: “So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth” (v. 8; repeated in v. 9).

Our story does not end with confusion, though, for the Lord has a plan: “For at that time I will change the speech of the peoples to a pure speech, that all of them may call upon the name of the Lord and serve him with one accord” (Zeph. 3:9). Immediately after the Babel episode, the line of Shem resumes from Genesis 10:21–32, culminating in Abram and Sarai (11:10–30). God’s plan in Abram was to extend a blessing to all the earth (12:3; Gal. 3:8). But Abram had to be dispersed from his homeland of Ur and Haran and live in tents as a wanderer in order to become “heir of the world” (Rom. 4:13). He and all his heirs will eventually settle in a city, but unlike Babel its “designer and builder is God,” who will dwell there with His people (Heb. 11:8–16, 40; Rev. 21:3), “and his name will be on their foreheads” (Rev. 22:4). The story of Abram also concerned a name-making, but from the Lord this time: “I will bless you and make your name great” (Gen. 12:2). This blessing was to come to fruition in the name of Abram’s greater offspring (Matt. 1:1; Gal. 3:16), who gives His people a new name: “My Delight Is in Her” (Isa. 62:1–4; Rev. 3:12).

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