Peter Leithart describes the whole history of redemption this way: "From the moment of the fall, (God) began his ages-long war against and prosecution of flesh." (Delivered, 283)
We see moments early in the Bible as God makes evaluative claims against flesh. In describing the flood, Leithart describes how "Yahweh's Spirit wearies of the struggle with flesh (Gen. 6:3) and grieves over the damage to creation (Gen. 6:6-7), the violence that flesh invariably produces (Gen. 6:13). In the flood, Yahweh wipes the world clean of all flesh (Gen. 6:13, 17; 7:21). (85)
Noah represents a re-creation of the whole world, a new start in a world in which all the flesh, death, and violence of the world has been put to death. Indeed, Noah plants a garden of his own - a vineyard. Noah's name means "bringer of rest." Perhaps he has brought the world from violence to Sabbath peace. However God's post-flood evaluation of humanity as inclined to evil from youth (8:21) is ultimately confirmed in the great fall that takes place at the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11 where humanity is divided.
To appreciate the Tower of Babel, it will help to meet up again with our Jewish traveler.
The Jewish traveler we met in yesterday's post is part of a fictional travelogue which allows us to in-dwell an ancient sacrificial culture. In three separate accounts, the traveler encounters an Egyptian, a Babylonian, and a Greek. Here are his reflections upon entering Babylon:
"My fathers were here," I mused as I wandered the dusty streets of Babylon. They had been captured and transported to this very place. Perhaps the palace where Daniel had served Nebuchadnezzar was still standing, or the place where the king had set up his great image and commanded all in Babylon to bow to it. Perhaps this square was the place of the great furnace where the three children sang as they stood in the fire with the son of God.
"The temples of the land between the rivers are very impressive. As I have traveled along the Euphrates, I have seen great houses of the gods, some standing strong like fortresses, some in ruins. Some structures rise up above the landscape like mountains made by human hands, with a temple at the top that seemed to scrape the edge of heaven. They must have been one hundred cubits tall.
"I spoke to an old man who sat by the gate of the city. Temples, he said, were the main elements of worship in Babylon. They are divided into three main areas, a babu, a gate, and then the bitu, the house of the god itself, and the inner sanctuary is the kissumu, the dark room, the place that knows not daylight. He told me that the man-made mountains were called ziqquratu, which meant a place highly built. The temples were called the "bonds of heaven and earth," or the "highly built house." I could almost hear Sennacherib's great boast at the walls of Jerusalem, and the boast of the king of Babylon of which Isaiah told. (Isaiah 36-39). The temples of Babylon and Assyria are there to puff up the pride of kings." (Delivered, 49-50)
This account helps us to understand the Tower of Babel. The tower is built not just to earn fame, but to be a temple, to connect heaven and earth. It is to be a dwelling for Babylonian gods. Though in exile from God's presence, this clan descended from Noah's son Shem wants to "re-establish the Garden." (A House for My Name, 59) God's evaluation is two-fold: 1) although the mandate to Noah was to fill the earth, the Babylonians don't want to be scattered. As a result, they'll be scattered more widely than they were to begin with. 2) They want to make a name for themselves, but the name they receive is "Babel" which means confusion. (A House for My Name, 60)
We see in this transition that there is a uniting power of flesh in the building of the Tower which is dissipated after God's judgment. Post-Babel, the division and fragmentation are institutionalized and part of what flesh does is separate itself from other flesh.
Paul would later describe the works of flesh in this way - that it produces "enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissentions, factions, envying. (Gal. 5:20-21) Flesh is still stronger than ever after Babel, but God's war against and prosecution of flesh goes on. He is building the case. We will see with Abraham that God now sets about creating a community that is radically devoted to opposing flesh at its very root, a community that will not exist for its own fleshly boasting, but will be God's means to reunite the world. God will undo the curse of division from Babel, even as he undoes the curse of death from Eden. Re-entry into Eden for the exiles. Re-gathering of God's scattered, fragmented, Babel people.
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