The people of Babel build the tower knowing that unless they do so, they will be scattered throughout the earth. Verse 4 says, "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, otherwise we will be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.’" Here we see some really interesting facts. That sounds very familiar to the acts of unredeemed man throughout history and to the antichrist yet to come. So the first sin of Babel was to directly disobey the command of God and to do things their own way. They might increase the earth’s population which God wanted to see happen, but they did not fill the earth. God said, "And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.’" So if the entirety of mankind which had populated the earth since the flood decided to settle in one place, they would fail to obey God’s command to fill the earth. Yet in doing so, they had directly violated what God had commanded to Noah and his sons just two chapters earlier in Genesis 9:1. They formed a city such that a vibrant and thriving economy could develop. They journeyed together to the plain in Shinar and decided to settle there. They said to one another, ‘Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly.’ And they used brick for stone, and they used tar for mortar." At first read, it wouldn’t appear that these people did anything wrong up to this point. It came about as they journeyed east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. Verses 1-3 says, "Now the whole earth used the same language and the same words. We must look at what the people of ancient times did wrong so that we don’t repeat the sins in our time. This is important because the sins of the people of Babel of old will be repeated throughout history until the very end. It could also be translated Babylon, as in the case of the Babylonian empire which encompassed the region many years later or as in Babylon as symbolized by the evil world empires and forces that have pervaded the earth throughout history and will certainly be in play in the last days (Revelation 14:8,17:5,18:2). Now we should note before we read this passage that Babel was and is a literal location on the earth near the Euphrates River in the Middle East. Genesis 11:1-9 is the account of the Tower of Babel.
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