Oh, We're Halfway There!

So in Genesis 11:10-26 we've come to another genealogy, the partner to what we had in chapter 5. Just like that one, this one is structured “to show the legitimate descent of God's election,” tracing forward not just anybody and everybody, but only the human lineage that God is choosing, or electing, to carry his promises.¹ This one, though, has the added bonus that it forms a bridge between the two main pieces of Genesis. Chapters 1-11 – everything we've been looking at since June last year – is called the primeval history. Everything yet to come in Genesis is called the patriarchal history. And today's passage is what ties the one to the other.

The first few names of it should be pretty familiar, because it repeats a line we partially traced in chapter 10. It starts off with Noah's son Shem, and then introduces his son Arpachshad (Genesis 11:10-13). It's a wild name to have, but it probably means “border of the Chaldeans,”² and it might indicate a people group living in “the desert regions of western Mesopotamia.”³ Then, Shelah's name suggests someone being sent forth or going out, thrown forward like a spear or arrow.⁴ The next name is Eber (Genesis 11:14-17), whose name means 'across' or 'beyond,' and might look to a nomadic people crossing over the Euphrates River.⁵ In the Table of Nations, “to Eber were born two sons: the name of the one was Peleg, for in his days the earth was divided, and his brother's name was Joktan” (Genesis 10:25). In chapter 10, we learned a lot about Joktan ties to southern Arabia; but now we move forward with Peleg's story (Genesis 11:16-19), which might have something to do with the way people in the south needed to create irrigation canals to make their land fertile.

The rest of the genealogy takes us further north, to the steppe region of north Mesopotamia above the bend in the Euphrates. The people up here were organized into confederations of tribes, and each tribe had sub-tribes in it, and smaller groups in those; everybody had a place.⁶ Following after Peleg, Reu's name seems to mean 'shepherd' (Genesis 11:18-21),⁷ and the semi-nomadic lifestyle these tribes adopted was all about raising small livestock on the steppe land while having a few settlements here and there to farm wherever there was rain.⁸ It wasn't bad when they had a strong grip on wool production, because they could command high prices for it.⁹

Zeroing in on just one area, there's a stretch above the Upper Euphrates where two main rivers flow south to feed into it: the Balikh in the west, and the Khabur in the east. And the next two names in the genealogy (Genesis 11:21-26) are settlements there: Sarugi, to the west of the Balikh, and Nahur, on a west branch of the Khabur.¹⁰ So it's people living in this area who are coming into clearer and clearer focus as this genealogy tells us that God's plan for the world is still advancing, that his original blessing is still working itself out, narrowing in on its goal.¹¹

But there's a big bump in the road. Around the year 2200 BC, changes in the ocean currents set off a massive multi-century period of drought in much of the known world, one of the most severe climate shifts in known history. When that rapid-onset drought gripped the areas around Sarugi and Nahur, settlements there collapsed, and hundreds of thousands of people began to move south in search of survival.¹² They were, by some definitions of the term, refugees.¹³ But their movement away from their home was “an exodus of unprecedented proportions” in human history,¹⁴ and it seems as though the family line our Bible is tracing was part of it.

Naturally, people in Sumer and Akkad, weren't necessarily thrilled with all of this. All kinds of foreign peoples “descended in increasing numbers on southern Mesopotamia during the decades following 2200 BC.”¹⁵ They eventually – a century or so too late – built a 110-mile wall from river to river, trying to keep this wave of northern immigrants out.¹⁶ But myriads upon myriads had already made a “persistent infiltration of the south,” bringing a “substantive influx of immigrants” into their cities and lands, until their kind made up about a tenth of the total population.¹⁷ That included the immigrants who, unbeknownst to all, carried the hope of the world.

If they went far down enough, then where the Euphrates poured into the Persian Gulf, they found a Sumerian city called Ur. Ur was a very old Sumerian city – from the Bible's point of view, the same kind of city as Babel¹⁸ – and its position where the river met the gulf meant it could prosper heavily from the metal trade in addition to its lively textile industry.¹⁹ Back when Sumer was united by the rule of Sargon and his kids – you might remember them the other week as the inspiration for the Bible's Nimrod – Sargon appointed his daughter Enheduana as high priestess at Ur.²⁰ Once the Akkadian Empire weakened and was overrun by mountain tribes, eventually a governor of Ur named Ur-Nammu rose up, claimed kingship, and established the Third Dynasty of Ur around the year 2100 BC; and in the city's heart, he built a ziggurat, a big ol' Tower of Babel all Ur's own.²¹

The other month, as we compared the Bible's flood to pagan stories, we remembered that they thought it was their storm god Enlil who unleashed the flood. Well, the same people thought that their moon-god – Sumerians called him Nanna, and Akkadians called him Sin – was “the firstborn of Enlil.”²² Ur was a city wholly devoted to the moon-god, thinking of him as “king of heaven and earth,”²³ as the “lord who lights up the darkness” all through the night.²⁴ They pictured him as a rancher whose field was the night sky and who kept the stars as his cattle. He was especially popular in southermost Sumer, places like Ur, where the economy depended on herds, since shepherds so often watched their flocks by night beneath the moon's protective gaze.²⁵

This is the Ur where some of the immigrants from up north found themselves. Since the kingdom had plenty it wanted to get done, and the immigrants needed work to do, they were ripe to draft for labor in building “massive boundary walls, fortifications, temples, ziqqurats, and canals” at Ur and neighboring cities.²⁶ But the kingdom didn't last. Around the year 2000 BC, it got invaded, and its last king, Ur-Nammu's great-great-grandson Ibbi-Sin, was carried off captive amidst the destruction.²⁷ The kingdom's disintegration meant “largely unchecked migration into the region,” not to mention grain shortages that had stomachs growling.²⁸ And even as kings in other cities (some of foreign background) seized power, Ur was being rebuilt bigger than before: a fourth of a square mile inside the city wall, but lots of settlement beyond the wall.²⁹

It's in this rebuilt Ur of the Middle Bronze Age that we at last meet a man named Terah, who either was born in the area or came there through his or his family's migration (Genesis 11:26). As the story of Shem's legacy closes and a new story begins, we're twice told that Terah “fathered Abram and Nahor and Haran” (Genesis 11:26-27). The one given pride of place, though not necessarily in order of birth, is Abram – whom we'll later know as Abraham, but that's getting ahead of ourselves. The way the genealogies in Genesis are artfully designed, Noah was the tenth generation from Adam, and he had three sons. Now, Terah is the ninth generation from Shem, and he's also got three sons – one of whom will rise into that same tenth-place position Noah had. The question this story has to answer is: which one of them is it going to be?³⁰

So let's come meet Terah as he tries to raise these three boys into men. It's not clear whether Terah lives inside Ur's city walls or in the settlements and tent camps stretching outward from the city. But whatever the case, his life is a lot different from what his ancestors knew before they came south. There just wasn't enough land for all these newcomers to be shepherds roaming free.³¹ So Terah, and his boys as they came of age, likely did seasonal labor: cleaning canals, making bricks, working construction jobs, hiring out to farms during the harvest.³² They might have even been drafted into military service now and then.³³ Have you ever pictured Abraham as a kid, playing board games with his brothers? Have you ever imagined them running through the winding streets of the city? Can you see a teenage Abraham doing those kinds of jobs? Because he would've.

What about their family's religious life? Based on the parallel to Noah, it'd be easy to assume that this chapter traces the family that kept the knowledge of the true God alive, even as every other candle smoldered and died, one by one.³⁴ But the shocking thing is, they didn't. Whatever was true about his fathers before him, Terah “happened to be a heathen.”³⁵ Centuries later, as Joshua reviews for Israel where they came from, he explains that “beyond the River lived your fathers in olden times – Terah, father of Abraham and father of Nahor – and they served other gods” (Joshua 24:2). Other gods, plural, besides the LORD – they were pagan polytheists! And which other gods? The gods of Ur, especially the moon-god and his wife. In fact, Terah's name is likely related to his language's word for 'moon,' and the names of several of his family members seem to be linked to the moon-cult.³⁶ No wonder later Jews spoke of Abraham's background as “ancestral godlessness.”³⁷ “His family was steeped in pagan idolatry.”³⁸ Luther went so far as to charge that Abram himself “lived in idolatry, had no true knowledge of God, and lacked both faith and the fear of God.”³⁹

So what happened in Abram's life that, in an environment of moon-worship and polytheism and idols and all the many rituals of Ur, led him to turn instead to such a different kind of religiosity? Now that's the big mystery. A common speculation later on, since God's “invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made” (Romans 1:20), was that a young Abram “recognized... from the pattern of the stars the One who arranged them,”⁴⁰ that he “intuited that there must be an invisible, single, intelligent source behind the visible, many, but silent heavenly bodies.”⁴¹ Moreover, people figured that Abram must have realized that an idol could never be worthy of its own craftsman's devotion.⁴² As an early teenager, maybe, Abram “began understanding the straying of the land, that everyone went astray after graven images and after pollution..., and he began to pray to the Creator of All so that he might save him from the straying of the sons of men.”⁴³ Thus, Abram “stopped worshipping idols and started believing in one God,” a radical move to make in the depths of ancient Sumer.⁴⁴ Perhaps, as one Jewish writing imagines, a voice from heaven answered his prayer: “You are searching for the God of gods, the Creator, in the understanding of your heart. I am He!”⁴⁵

Later Jewish readers imagined that, once Abram came to this new conviction, he became a bold witness, first and foremost to his dad, urging him to “worship the God of heaven, who sends down rain and dew upon the earth, and who makes everything upon the earth and created everything by his Word, and all life is in his presence. Why do you worship those who have no spirit in them?”⁴⁶

Whatever the story there, Abram and his brothers grew up. One of those brothers, Haran, had children, such as a son named Lot (Genesis 11:27). But then, tragedy struck. “Haran died in the presence of his father Terah in the land of his kindred, in Ur of the Chaldeans” (Genesis 11:28). This is the first human death actually stated in Genesis since the Flood itself; that's a big deal. Ignoring later legends about Abram committing arson against a temple and Haran dying in the blaze as he rushes in to rescue his gods,⁴⁷ all the Bible actually tells us is that something happened – maybe execution, maybe an accident, maybe an illness – that led to Haran dying, not just during his dad's lifetime, but in front of Terah's own two eyes.⁴⁸

Only now, in the wake of disaster, do we read that “Abram and Nahor took wives” (Genesis 11:29). Nahor marries a woman named Milcah, who is “the daughter of Haran.” Apparently, besides his son Lot, Haran had two daughters, “Milcah and Iscah.” While Terah cares for Lot as his own, Nahor marries his niece Milcah, which was “one way to provide for orphaned daughters who were not yet married at the time of their father's death.”⁴⁹ So we might expect that Abram will naturally marry Iscah, the other daughter. But instead, Abram marries a woman named Sarai. Unlike Milcah, we aren't told anything of where Sarai comes from; she's “the one woman here without genealogy.”⁵⁰ And while many early Jews and Christians tried to turn her into Iscah to make things neat and tidy,⁵¹ she just isn't. We're left in suspense for nine chapters until finally Abram admits that Sarai is “the daughter of my father, though not the daughter of my mother, and she became my wife” (Genesis 20:12). Sarai needs no genealogy because she's a child of Terah by a second wife.⁵²

We're told just one thing about Sarai at this point: “Sarai was barren; she had no child” (Genesis 11:30). It's just six even words in Hebrew, but it packs a punch, becoming “central to everything that follows.”⁵³ This is the Bible's first use of the word 'barren,' finally fulfilling God's warning to Eve about an uphill battle to conceive children (Genesis 3:16). Of all the pairs for God's blessing of fruitfulness to skip over, why Abram and Sarai's?⁵⁴ Aside from them being half-siblings, of course, which I can't imagine helped matters.⁵⁵

So here we are, and of Terah's three sons who could be heirs to the line of promise, Haran is prematurely dead, which leaves him out, and Abram's childlessness is, on first glance, “leaving no doubt that Abram is a minor character” in the story.⁵⁶ The obvious conclusion, for a first-time reader, is that there's only one hope for the future, and it lies with Nahor and his niece-wife Milcah. All told, though, the painful plight of two-thirds of Terah's sons gives him considerable cause to worry about the future of his family.⁵⁷

So we read that “Terah took” – and what did he take but what family he could? “Terah took Abram his son,” for one, and “Sarai his daughter-in-law, Abram's wife.” Terah doesn't desert them, even if he's losing hope of them providing him any more grandchildren. Terah also took “Lot the son of Haran, his grandson” (Genesis 11:31), to whom Terah had effectively become an adoptive father.⁵⁸ But Genesis says nothing about Terah taking to himself Nahor and Milcah – which is a strange omission, if they're really the hope for the future. They likely do join the action that follows, but Genesis elides mentioning them here to refocus our attention.

“And they went forth together from Ur of the Chaldeans” (Genesis 11:31). This home they'd made, this place where they lived – why leave it? Some speculated that they quit Ur, and indeed all of Sumer, owing to religious persecution due to Abram's religious defiance – that the locals “expelled them from the presence of their gods.”⁵⁹ That's not very likely. What's a bit more likely is the suggestion that Haran's death was so traumatic that Terah just needed to get away from the place where it happened, however it happened.⁶⁰ By this time, the Gulf was starting to retreat from Ur, which would eventually weaken it as an economic powerhouse,⁶¹ and maybe Terah worried that his family wouldn't survive in Sumer.

On a human level, it was Terah who instigated their move away from Ur and out of Sumer,⁶² even if maybe Abram urged his dad toward the decision.⁶³ But all this was in the hands of divine providence.⁶⁴ Four chapters from now, Abram will hear the words, “I am the LORD who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans” (Genesis 15:7), and based on that, centuries later Jews would remember the LORD as “the God who chose Abram and brought him out of Ur of the Chaldeans” (Nehemiah 9:7). Maybe there's hope that, by freeing the family from immersion in his old environment, Terah can break all the old chains and be fully converted to the LORD.⁶⁵

Saying goodbye to Ur, Terah and his family begin their journey, heading northwest along the banks of the Euphrates River, since following the river is the easiest way to navigate. They pass by Uruk and its famed walls; in the eastern distance, they spy Nippur, the city of Enlil, and Shuruppak, where local traditions say the ark was built; they march right past Babylon, probably with scarcely a glance.⁶⁶ They get to Hit, where all the best bitumen is found. They make their way into the territory of the kingdom centered at Mari. And somewhere along this way, Abram has an experience that changes his life.

In the New Testament, the first martyr, Stephen, looks back and suggests that “the God of glory” revealed himself to Abram “when he was in Mesopotamia” (Acts 7:2), before Abram “went out from the land of the Chaldeans” (Acts 7:4). Apparently “it was on that journey that God, we understand, spoke to him.”⁶⁷ Once Babel is in the rearview mirror, that's when Abram deepens his sense of a purpose for his life, that's when Abram begins to hear this God of Glory speaking to him. Despite his disqualifications, he's been chosen.

Terah's still in the driver's seat, but as Abram is realizing, Terah's decision to uproot the family was actually at the LORD's instigation, whether or not Terah knew him. And now we're told that Terah's destination for this trip was “to go into the land of Canaan” (Genesis 11:31) – again, whether or not Terah realizes that's where he's headed towards. That is his God-decreed destination. That is where Terah belongs. Every step Terah takes in these two months thus far is meant by God to bring him closer to Canaan, so that Terah can become patriarch in a new land and, once fully converted along the way, become someone truly great and majestic. God has a profound purpose for Terah, this idolatrous man who's on his way to deliver his family to their destiny.

So, since the goal is to get to Canaan, then they should soon be taking a westward turn. The Fertile Crescent curves downward through Syria and Lebanon into Canaan, and they should follow that path. But... they don't. The next words we read are that “they came to Harran” (Genesis 11:31), a town “situated on the Jullab river near the source of the Balikh.”⁶⁸ Reaching Harran on a journey from Ur to Canaan requires missing a big turn and taking a few unplanned ones. Harran is just too far north of the curve, 550 miles from Ur. Apparently, Terah stayed on the Euphrates until he reached the mouth of the Balikh, then veered north and followed it up.

What's going through Terah's mind? Why does he detour to Harran? There's a lot of mystery here – the Bible doesn't outright give us an answer – but it's important. First of all, remember that Terah's ancestors probably came from that region around the Balikh river valley a couple centuries earlier. For maybe the first time in his life, Terah's journey had taken him close to where grandpa was born. How could he not at least pay a visit? He reasons that it isn't too far out of the way. But once he does, Terah finds that this place makes him feel “comfortable in a culturally similar environment.”⁶⁹ He recognized his roots. He felt at home there.

This journey is likely after 1900 BC, by which time the drought in the region had subsided, and plenty of people were flooding back north to this area; one scholar called it “a veritable land rush,” with “tribes and kingdoms vying for access to and control of pastureland” in that region.⁷⁰ Communities were being revived, and many of the descendants who'd multiplied elsewhere were on their way up. For Terah to have led his house to Harran meant just following the well-worn path, going with the crowd, letting the flow of traffic bear them along.

What's more, Harran's very name suggests a crossroads for caravans, and Harran was indeed at the intersection of several major international trade routes. It was a natural stop for merchants going between the Mediterranean to the west, the Hurrians to the north, and the river civilizations to the southeast.⁷¹ In fact, some scholars suggest that Harran was originally “founded as a merchant outpost by Ur.”⁷² A place like that makes the dollar signs fill Terah's eyes. And given that the next chapter will mention the many possessions and servants that the family “acquired in Harran” (Genesis 12:5), Terah was right about the “economically promising conditions.”⁷³

As a fourth reason for Terah to stop, Harran was religiously familiar. Ur and Harran were united by both being “thriving centers of moon worship.”⁷⁴ In fact, it isn't until after the time of Jesus that we have clear evidence of anyone or anything worshipped in Harran other than the moon!⁷⁵ The moon-god had a major temple in Harran called the 'House of Rejoicing,' and its promised joy tugged at Terah's heartstrings and drew him in.⁷⁶

And as if that weren't all enough reason to stick around, Terah realizes that, even if Canaan were more of what he was looking for, it's hundreds of miles further. And he has to ask himself: Is any marginal benefit of Canaan worth that added work to get there? Why bother going on, when Harran is at least good enough? So Terah sees Harran, and he judges it to be “an excellent alternative without necessitating further travel.”⁷⁷ Tired from a two-month journey as it is, Terah throws in the towel. He taps out. He opts for Harran “rather than their original destination.”⁷⁸ Terah makes the decision on behalf of his family that this is the end of the trip. “When they came to Harran, they settled there” (Genesis 11:31). And “in settling in one worldly location, he is absorbed into the world.”⁷⁹ For Terah, that's where the story ends. Genesis flashes-forward through “the days of Terah,” revealing that, in the end, “Terah died in Harran” (Genesis 11:32). Terah never went further.

Terah had gotten derailed on the journey he was meant to take in life. He could have kept the course. He could have turned away from the river of ease when he needed to. But he saw that Harran would give him cultural comfort and a sense of family tradition. He could tell that Harran fit with the flow. He saw the lucrative prospects, the strategic opportunities, that setting up shop near Harran could yield. He recognized in Harran all the values ingrained in him by habit, including his old spiritual values. Harran offered him all the things he really wanted, without mustering any more effort for them than he already had. So it's not surprising that Terah turned aside to Harran. But by doing so, Terah veered away from where he was meant to go in life. And as the years and even decades passed him by, Terah stubbornly rooted himself in that decision. Terah never had a change of heart. Terah never escaped his old chains, just set them up in a new place. Terah never saw the destination God had in store. He was “unable to enter because of unbelief” (Hebrews 3:19). And so he never became what he was meant to be. Terah got stuck halfway to his goal, and gave up. And there he died.

Do you ever see Terah when you look in the mirror? God had a purpose for Terah, but Terah veered away; and sometimes, so do we. Sometimes, like Terah, we're tempted off-track by the appeal of a legacy we want to uphold. Terah had his ancestral roots near Harran; we might have our attachment to a particular idea of what it means to be an American, or we might have a family legacy, or some other tradition or custom or cultural bubble, and it's possible we can cling so hard to such things that it derails us from what we're meant to be about. Or sometimes, like Terah, we're tempted off-track by the flow of the crowd. The traffic of our society beats its path in rather predictable directions, toward certain ideas, toward certain practices. Our society travels toward consumption. Our society travels toward self-satisfaction. Our society travels toward particular views of what it means to be a good human, what it means to be a good citizen. Resisting that traffic is hard, and if you track the polls of what Christians in our society actually confess believing, much less what we end up doing, well, we increasingly follow the ways of the crowd. We don't want to swim against the current. We go with the flow.

Sometimes, like Terah, we're tempted off-track by the promise of an opportunity. Terah hoped for riches if he went to Harran – and it sounds like he got 'em. He decided that he could provide better for himself in Harran than God could provide for him on the journey into the unknown. But don't we routinely make the same choice, and don't we choose what will make us feel secure and prosperous? Don't we aim to bless ourselves, to gain and gain? Sometimes, I'm sure we do – just like Terah did – and we'll step off the path of the call to get it.

Sometimes, like Terah, we're tempted off-track by a familiar vice. In Terah's case, it was moon-worship, which was such a familiar habit that it once again took hold of his religious life. For us, though, it could be any vice, any number of things we like to do, are habituated to do, and find that it's just too irresistible to not steer toward this one time... and then another... and then another...

Or sometimes, if we're honest, we – like Terah – find ourselves off-track, for one of those or some other reason, but once we are, we decide it's easier or more comfortable or more pleasing to give up and stay there, rather than to get back on track and go the distance. We settle down where we've gone off-track. And depending on whether it's just our personal potential we're avoiding or else the broader human call to virtue, we might become – in the words of the New Testament – “hardened by the deceitfulness of sin” (Hebrews 3:13) – because isn't that, after all, what it is to “fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23) and so miss what we're meant for?

That's the tragic story of Terah, and sometimes it can be the story of you and me. But the fantastic news is that “if we get stuck for some reason, it doesn't necessarily mean that God has lost interest in or finished dealing with us.”⁸⁰ Abram stopped in Harran, the same as his father Terah did, precisely because Terah did. And that was a threat to God's plan for humanity. So what we read in the very next verse is that “the LORD said to Abram: Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you” (Genesis 12:1). God calls Abram again. Even if Terah won't go with him, even if Terah's old age seems to justify staying put, God tells Abram that the movement comes first. God calls Abram to get back on the road.

It's going to cost Abram, this journey. It asks him to become an exile from his land. It asks him to abandon his clan. It asks him to leave the people closest to him, including his increasingly elderly father. It asks him, in effect, to shear himself of his entire identity. And for what? To step out into the unknown, to a destination not even yet specified. It asks Abram to defy the direction of traffic, to give up the cultural comfort and traditional legacy, to risk losing every ounce of profit he's made in Harran, to forget entirely about the religious influences and habits that have been plying themselves on Abram's soul again and again in pagan Harran. It asks Abram to go hundreds of miles into a grand mystery – all out of trust that this voice won't lead him astray. Can Abram do what Terah couldn't? Will Abram reveal a different love moving in his heart? So we read that Abram “went out, not knowing where he was going” (Hebrews 11:8). He gambled it all on God.

And in so doing, he embodied the hope which Terah's apathy and despair had denied, and in some distant way, Abram redeemed his father. For one day, in the very land which Abram's sandals trod down, there would be born a little boy whose heart beat with a rhythm older than the moon. He would be Jesus, “the son of Abraham, the son of Terah” (Luke 3:34). Because Abram refused to live his life merely halfway there, Terah the idolater became Terah the ancestor of God-made-Man. No wonder, as Jesus grew and began ministering to all the other descendants of Terah and beyond, he declared that he “came not to call the righteous, but sinners” (Mark 2:17) – people who'd lost their way and turned aside to their own Harrans, giving up or mistaking their journeys.

And Jesus simply wouldn't stand for that. “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself,” as Abram did when he gave up land and kindred and father's house. “And let him take up his cross,” embracing the potential for shame and suffering on the road. “And let him follow me” (Matthew 16:24). “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me,” Jesus said. That was the lesson Abram had to learn: not to be so attached to Terah as to cling to him in Harran when the LORD was saying go on. “Whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me” (Matthew 10:37-38). Jesus practiced what he preached. One wouldn't need to take a cross to follow him unless he were carrying a cross as well. “He humbled himself by becoming obedient,” not merely as Abram did, to the point of departure, but “to the point of death, even death on the cross” (Philippians 2:8).

Jesus obediently offered his life, for the salvation of Abram, and for the salvation of Haran and Nahor and Terah and Serug and Reu and Peleg and all the rest, if they'd take it. But Jesus refused to make the grave his Harran to settle down in. Taking the lost souls whom he acquired in the realms of death, he journeyed up and out of the grave to the realm of life, and refused to tarry long halfway to heaven. Neither does he bid us settle down at the cosmic halfway marker. The Apostle Paul speaks to us of “the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:14). Where Terah stopped short, we must not. Where Abram continued on in trusting obedience, we have all the more reason to. To close with one of my favorite verses from a seldom-sung hymn: “I do not ask to see the way my feet will have to tread, / but only that my soul may feed upon the Living Bread. / 'Tis better far that I should walk by faith close to his side; / I may not know the way I go, but oh, I know my Guide!”⁸¹ Amen.

We Babble On

It's one of the more embarrassing memories I have. It was almost nine years ago now. I was in Greece, and I was making my way to the Holy Mountain, Mount Athos, where I'd gotten special clearance to stay in the monasteries for a few days as a pilgrim. Early one Thursday morning, in the darkness, I'd taken a 5:30 bus from Thessaloniki two hours north to Ouranoupoli, where I'd picked up my pass (my diamontirion) and bought a ferry ticket at another office – the only way to the Holy Mountain is by boat. By the time that ferry reached the port of Dafni on the mountain's coast, it was quarter past noon, and all I needed to do was find another boat to the monastery. Only, I stepped off the first boat and realized that nothing was labeled and that most of the people milling around me couldn't understand a word I was saying. No longer could I assume everybody knew at least a few words of English. And my Greek wasn't good enough to get by. Eventually, someone directed me to a portly fellow in a cafe who understood me enough to grasp my need. He pointed me to a boat I'd passed back and forth a few times – a boat which had just pulled away, and which apparently sold its tickets on board, rather than prior to boarding like all the others. As I prepared to ask what other options I had, he made a pair of calls. Port police arrived, escorting me back to the dock to look at the departing boat – which was circling back for me. As a man on the back called out for an explanation, the port policeman pointed to me and, in an unmistakable tone, simply yelled: “Amerikano!” The results of a language barrier can be most mortifying.  

(Things were somewhat better once I was in the monasteries; I had good conversations with a couple American-born monks, I overheard a guestmaster use a bit of English to communicate with some Romanian pilgrims, and even my roommate at one monastery, a Russian Orthodox seminarian visiting from Moscow, spoke English well enough to bridge the gap.)

But back to the present, and better days. These past couple weeks, we've been exploring the opening verses of Genesis 11, the story of people who settle on the Sumerian plain and decide to bake bricks and build a city and a tower rising all the way to the sky. We've heard how the Babylonians thought of their city as maybe older than the gods themselves, but even if not, then at least built by gods for gods in the days of creation. That's certainly not the picture Genesis has, where this city's built by humans long after creation. We've considered the city as a political project, the beginning of a kingdom where men lord it over others. We've considered the city as a new kind of civilization, aiming to establish its own brand of truth and justice, although inevitably “iniquity and trouble are within it, ruin is in its midst, oppression and fraud don't depart from its marketplace” (Psalm 55:10-11). And we've considered the tower, a ziggurat meant to be a staircase for gods to descend to their temples on earth, as a religious project, the dawning of idolatry and its way of looking at the world.

At this point, we read that “the LORD came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of humanity have built” (Genesis 11:5). But there we've stopped, waiting to find out if he has anything to say, now that the action is shifting his way. And he sure does. The story started with a background note, asking us as readers to imagine that “the whole earth had one lip and one words” (Genesis 11:1). Now God calls our attention back to that: “Behold, one people, and one lip is for all of them” (Genesis 11:6). One lip, one language – ]we know, at some point in human history, there must have been just “one original language.”¹ And that's certainly no bad thing: “One single language was right for humble people.”² Certainly they could then “take proper advantage of their common language” to do good to each other, to foster understanding and harmony and virtue.³ Even this great city would make an awesome “institutional base from which to carry out man's mission in the world.”⁴

This 'one people' is equipped not just with “one lip,” but also with “one words,” maybe 'few words' (Genesis 11:1), “a particular uniformity of speech and writ.”⁵ Some linguists contend that “our mother tongue can affect how we think and how we perceive the world.”⁶ Well, this one language gives this one people a “common understanding of the world” to share.⁷ But “a language can only give us a partial glimpse of reality, selected by the categories of that language.”⁸ So this one common understanding can only ever be incomplete, expressing a vision of the world that differs in some crucial ways from the world. And the fact that they have 'one words' could reflect there being just a few limited ideas – that, for all their aspirations, they've come to be uncreative and unreflective, as they all think about the same things in the same ways.⁹ No wonder, as they build their city and tower, that, unlike God surveying his creation, then never stop to see whether or not it's good.¹⁰

So suppose they finish it that way. Suppose God pats them on the back and walks away. It's a civilizational project that, by its very nature, will limit the people's ability to imagine anything outside this direction they've embarked on. If humanity stays just one people with a limited frame of reference, then who will ever rub idea on idea to spark a flame, when their whole system is designed to “limit the emergence of new ideas,”¹¹ to keep humanity “trapped in an echo chamber of its own design?”¹² How can their vision not become “a hermetically sealed shadow world cut off from what is real,” where “self-examination... would be impossible?”¹³ The city's also a political project bent on securing and keeping dominance. But a universal politics, which addicts its subjects and doesn't let them imagine a different world, “would have no effective source of opposition.”¹⁴ If this one-world empire faces no challenges, it can reign in eternal tyranny, their boots grinding humanity forever into the dirt under new suns. And this is a religious project that directs people to gods who can be cajoled down to barter in a world where dead idols are pampered while live children starve. If that's worldwide, if that same religiosity fills the earth, then humanity's soul will be chained by covenant unending with death. Early Christians wondered how a child taught its language by idolaters could avoid learning idolatrous habits, when “in that milieu he heard his earliest words and sucked in that falsehood with his mother's milk.”¹⁵

Such a city and tower are what “they have begun to do, and now,” says God, “all that they devise to do will not be withheld from them” (Genesis 11:6). As one people with one language and one agenda, they can harness the entirety of human effort in the same direction all at once. When our Amish neighbors raise a barn, it's the power of their whole community poured into it, hence its swift achievement. But what could we raise with the mind and muscle of the whole human race? That's what Genesis invites us to wonder. What God sees when he looks down the road from here is “the prospect of unrestrained human powers exercised in support of unlimited imaginings and desires.”¹⁶ Suppose that, for the last four thousand years, we'd been harnessing the total human effort into furthering medicine. All the resources and attention wasted on other squabbles, poured into that instead. Would any cure have been withheld from us? Or suppose today, Earth put everything we have into finding a way to settle Mars. With the full backing of a world at peace, would that be withheld from us once we'd dreamed it and schemed it? Eventually, we'd surely make a way.

The possibilities are as endless as human desire. No wonder God judges that “nothing will succeed in checking their impulse,”¹⁷ that human beings “will not allow themselves to be turned away from what they have undertaken.”¹⁸ It sounds like quite the compliment. But imagine what it means if “anything that is good or evil will be within their grasp.”¹⁹ It's one thing for an angry caveman to go on a mass clubbing spree, a worse thing for his descendant today to be a mass shooter, and worse still to hand him some nuclear launch codes. More power without more virtue, more know-how without more wisdom, is a recipe for disaster. What God sees is that “the more power they are able to concentrate, the more harm they will be able to do to themselves and the world.”²⁰ There's no question that we'd “use the leverage of unity to magnify the human capacity for evil” – it's just what we do.²¹ If our dreams are unlimited, what about our nightmares?

All we seem to want, irrespective of consequences, is that “all that we devise to do will not be withheld from us” (Genesis 11:6). That language shows up just one other place in the Bible, when “Job answered the LORD and said, 'I know that you can do all things, and that your device cannot be withheld from you'” (Job 42:1-2).²² This is God's sole right, to irresistibly accomplish his plan. That's what we're demanding: in refusing to believe in words like 'impossible' or 'no,' humanity is grasping after a collective godhood.²³ If we could get hold of it, humanity would be a corrupt god loose in the universe. No wonder God sees already in this city and tower a “harmony that was full of harm.”²⁴ This one-track human ambition not only threatens humanity's humanity, but it poses “a great threat to the earth,” and beyond.²⁵ As one writer put it, “neither the earth will put up with it nor will the heavens bear to behold” what nightmarish hells an unlimited sinful race will crack open.²⁶

Later Babylonians had a saying: “If a city's top rises into the sky, that city will be abandoned; if a city's top rises into the sky like a mountain peak, that city will be turned to rubble; if cities rise into the sky like clouds, they will experience misfortune.”²⁷ God won't stand for it. So here he prepares “to foil the contrivance of their mad undertaking.”²⁸ If before “a man said to a companion, 'Come, let us brick bricks..., Come, let us build a city'” (Genesis 11:3-4), now God mimics them in heaven: “Come, let us go down and mix there their language, that a man not understand the lip of a companion” (Genesis 11:7). Which is exactly what he does: “the LORD mixed the lip of all the earth” (Genesis 11:9). It's a weird turn of phrase, to 'mix' a lip or a language – it's a term you'd use in baking for mixing different ingredients together.²⁹ Middle Eastern kings used that phrase to describe forcibly resettling people into a city and integrating them into the existing population, which is the opposite of what God is up to.³⁰ Here, God mixes new ways of talking into the flour of the human experience.³¹

It's fitting, because when God says 'Let us mix,' 'Let us confuse,' it's spelled almost just like the word for 'brick' spelled backwards, suggesting that God will “unbrick what they brick,” deconstructing not their tower and their city but the language building-blocks that are holding up the very foundations.³² So here “the laws of language were torn apart,”³³ “their common speech became a babble of tongues.”³⁴ Taking this at face value, it must've seemed to them like “they began speaking nonsense, like insane people, to one another.”³⁵ As a result, “they were dispersed through their diversity of languages.”³⁶ “So the LORD scattered them from there over the face of all the earth” (Genesis 11:8), breaking up their united peoplehood and exiling them from the safe haven they'd tried to build themselves.³⁷ This city can't be their artificial Eden; they're sent every which way. The word 'mix' makes sense now: it's a blender without a lid, whirling and spattering humanity everywhere.³⁸ It was everything the city was supposed to stop (Genesis 11:4). In trying to stave off their worst fears, they guaranteed those fears. So naturally, “they stopped building the city” (Genesis 11:8). Why bother any longer?

“Therefore, its name is called...” (Genesis 11:9). The Bible is written so brilliantly. The word for 'name,' shem, sounds like the word for 'there,' sham, which itself is the first syllable of the word for 'heaven,' shamayim. The people settled in sham and wanted to build a tower all the way to shamayim so they could make their own shem; what results is that from shamayim, God comes down and judges them from sham, so that everyone imposes a shem on the city.³⁹ God cancels out the shem they meant to place and gives them the exact opposite of what they'd prayed for.⁴⁰ It's “poetic justice” – literally.⁴¹ Hence “they called its name 'Babel'” (Genesis 11:9).

The Babylonians hinted that Babel was named from its mighty rivers that enriched the soil and channeled the commerce of all the land their way, since their word for 'to channel' was babali.⁴² The Bible hits back and says Babel gets its name “because from there the LORD scattered them” (Genesis 11:9). The real flow doesn't channel the world to Babel but away from Babel, dislodging and impoverishing the city.⁴³ The Babylonians also bragged that Babel was bab-ili, 'the gate of the gods.' They therefore postured as “Babylon the pure,”⁴⁴ “the pure city.”⁴⁵ But in Hebrew, babel sounds a lot like balal, 'mix'.⁴⁶ Instead of an orderly gathering of gods, Babel is all scrambled. In fact, this word for 'mixed' leads to a Hebrew word for 'perversion,' mixtures like incest and bestiality (Leviticus 18:23; 20:12) – so far from being a 'pure city,' it's a disgustingly perverted city.⁴⁷

Not only does 'Babel' now refer to people being channeled away instead of channeled in, not only does 'Babel' denote a perverted scramble instead of a pure city where gods gather, but when God announces, “Let us mix,” that word is spelled the same in Hebrew as the word for 'foolishness.'⁴⁸ While they're pretending to be “Babylon which diffuses wisdom,”⁴⁹ God pronounces them the city of foolishness – not to mention that babel sounds a bit like mabbul, the Flood!⁵⁰ These intricate puns pile up, “bursting Babel's bubble of bombast.”⁵¹

So it's no surprise people read this as a straightforward story of “God's punishment” on human “audacity and impiety.”⁵² First, God “let them toil and labor” on the pointless project, letting them waste their efforts to teach them a lesson.⁵³ Second, God gave humanity newfound limitations, yielding “an enormous impediment to human labors.”⁵⁴ And third, what God does severs the social bonds keeping the one people together. The Apostle Paul said, “There are doubtless many different languages in the world, and none is without meaning, but if I don't know the meaning of the language, I'll be a foreigner to the speaker and the speaker will be a foreigner to me” (1 Corinthians 14:10-11). Down through history, differences in language have often stoked “fear of foreigners.”⁵⁵ Once people saw each other as foreigners, “war broke out among them on account of the divisions that the languages brought among them.”⁵⁶ From then on, this judgment became “the most ruinous plague in human affairs..., the beginning and seedbed of all evils and discords.”⁵⁷ (My quest for the ferry at Dafni wasn't quite that dramatic, but the language barriers that made me a foreigner sure plagued me!)

But the early Christians saw another side, too: how, even in this, God “is entirely mercy to his creation.”⁵⁸ We needed help breaking out of the self-made cage we loved! God's intervention brought “a holy gift,” that an empire of sin “should not once more contaminate all people and make the offense general.”⁵⁹ God wanted “to make it impossible for them to form a dangerous unity” that could hurt us in the future.⁶⁰ Divided, we're limited in the good we can do, but we're also more limited in the amount of evil we can do.⁶¹ We're practiced enough in bringing nightmares to life as it is; God has kindly spared us from the nightmare of a world dreaming one invincible woe. He's stolen from us the strength we'd claimed to thrust all things down into hellfire.

In the process, “the mercy of the Lord appeared among their tribes and relieved those who were afflicted by their deeds.”⁶² Having been under the thumb of this political project, the forced laborers find great relief when the language of propaganda and control is shattered.⁶³ The tongue of tyrants' command being tangled, it can't demand allegiance from the uncomprehending masses any more.⁶⁴ The fall of this prospective one-world empire liberates the downtrodden, so that they can't be enslaved forever.

And since “habits of speech can create habits of mind,”⁶⁵ with all these new languages God introduces “into the drama of humanity different ways of thinking about and engaging with the world.”⁶⁶ So “a great variety of customs, religions, and ideas arose because of the diversity of languages.”⁶⁷ As one philosopher puts it: “a thousand gardens must bloom in order to avoid the flowers of evil becoming the world's monocultured crop.”⁶⁸ In setting human thought free to bloom in all colors, God “forced them to advance to a better state..., a good and beneficial discord.”⁶⁹ He breaks the level surface as if plowing and planting, summoning a new shoot of hope. Now peoples “each have their own language with the resources provided by the Lord,”⁷⁰ so that “with the tongues, as with gold, he made them rich.”⁷¹ There's a rich beauty to all these different words and thoughts, with “over seven thousand languages in existence today,”⁷² all born from older languages through change.⁷³

But those left behind in Shinar resented sorely the burden of Babel. They dreamed of a day when “the lands of Shubur and Hamazi, as well as twin-tongued Sumer..., together with Akkad... and even the land Martu, resting in green pastures, yea, the whole world of well-ruled people, will be able to speak to Enlil in one language! For on that day... shall Enki... change the tongues in their mouth, as many as he once placed there, and the speech of mankind shall be truly one!”⁷⁴ Impatient, empires down through history have tried to make it happen, often imposing a preferred language, a lingua franca, that can be shared by many peoples – today, English functions as the world's major lingua franca (as even my time on Mount Athos illustrates). But that's often happened by force: one Roman citizen said that “the imperial city has taken pains to impose on her subjugated peoples not only her yoke but also her language..., but at what cost this was achieved: all those terrible wars, all that human slaughter, all that human bloodshed!”⁷⁵

God warned Israel about this long before, that if they were faithless, he'd “bring a nation against you from far away..., a nation whose tongue you don't understand” (Deuteronomy 28:49). And that's exactly what happened when he called Babel against Judah for her sins. Babel was “a nation from afar..., a nation whose tongue you do not know, nor can you understand what they say” (Jeremiah 51:5). And in exile, they had to learn “the language of the Chaldeans” (Daniel 1:4). Even after resettling their homeland, “half their children... could not speak the language of Judah, but only the language of each people” (Nehemiah 13:24). Early Judaism had to adapt, translating their Scriptures into Greek and explaining them in the synagogues in Aramaic.

It was into that situation that God sent his Son, the same Lord who had inspired Adam's language and scrambled the languages at Babel.⁷⁶ He was born into a multilingual Galilee where he and his apostles would've spoken Aramaic on a regular basis, Greek often, read Hebrew as needed, and used a bit of Latin here or there.⁷⁷ In such languages he ministered, not with wordless songs of angels, but with grammar and syntax like ours, nouns and verbs and adjectives people could understand. And when at last he went to the cross for us, at the top was a sign “in Aramaic, in Latin, and in Greek” (John 19:19-20). He died under the banner of the many languages of Babel to “ransom people for God from every... language” (Revelation 5:9).

But the Lord didn't stay dead. He rose from the grave, he ascended into heaven, and he told his disciples to wait for a new power to come. And then it was Pentecost morning. Just as Jews imagined that “the LORD sent a great wind upon the tower” that stretched toward heaven,⁷⁸ and that “the winds cast down the great tower from on high,”⁷⁹ so in this city “there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind” (Acts 2:2). The rushing wind hadn't come this time to cancel the one sound of human defiance, but to herald the LORD come down to build something new. “And there appeared to them dividing tongues as of fire..., and they began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance” (Acts 2:3-4), with “no foreign speech beyond their powers of comprehension.”⁸⁰ As a crowd gathered, visitors from every nation, “they were confused” – just like the people at Babel⁸¹ – “because each one was hearing them speak in his own language” (Acts 2:6). The message bridged every Babel-divide, for “we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God” (Acts 2:11), as “every tongue among the people was confessing Christ and speaking of his mysteries.”⁸²

Babel is happening in reverse! “The spirit of pride fragmented language, and the Holy Spirit gathered dispersed languages into one!”⁸³ The upper room where the Spirit came down “is exalted even more than Babel,” had “conquered Babel in the benevolent speech of all tongues,” by becoming “a school for the sons of the light.”⁸⁴ What was built was a single people, the Church; and just as some Jews read Genesis as teaching that the people at Babel were originally “united in possessions, what one possessed being at the others' disposal,”⁸⁵ so this church was “together... and had all things in common” (Acts 2:44).⁸⁶ In time, this people grew troubled, as “a complaint by the Greek-speakers arose against the Hebrew-speakers” over unfair treatment (Acts 6:1). But “there arose on that day a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem, and they were scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria” (Acts 8:1). And just as the first scattering had a silver lining in filling the earth, so now “those who were scattered went about preaching the word” (Acts 8:4). They “traveled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch” (Acts 11:19), but that was only the beginning of what God had begun to do in them – and all that Christ desired would not be withheld from them.

“If he had given his Good News to the world in a single language, only a single people would have received it to be made disciples; but now that he has given it abundantly in all tongues, all peoples of the earth have lovingly longed for it.”⁸⁷ By the close of the second century, we're told of “many nations” who “are barbarians with respect to their language but, as regards doctrine and practices and conduct, they are most wise and pleasing to God on account of the faith.”⁸⁸ Thus, “each one according to his language prays to God and sings his praises as he is able, and the Lord of Every Language hears those who pray in every language as though he were hearing one utterance.”⁸⁹ These were centuries of Scripture “spreading far and wide through translation into a variety of other languages” so that it “came to the knowledge of the nations for their salvation.”⁹⁰ By the late fourth century, Gospels had been “translated to the language” of “Syrians and Egyptians and Indians and Persians and Ethiopians and countless other nations,”⁹¹ a priest from the Balkans could celebrate German Goths “scrutinizing the utterances of the Holy Spirit” in their language,⁹² and a Spanish bishop could say that “Latium, Egypt, Athens, and Thracians, Arabians, Spaniards acknowledge God; the Holy Spirit understands all languages.”⁹³ “All these tongues express the one faith..., all tongues preach the same wisdom, the same doctrine and discipline,” but “however great the variety of languages, it is one and the same gold that is preached.”⁹⁴

Missionaries from France and Ireland brought a new mission to the island of Britain, gradually raising up poets and leaders in its various languages and translating the basic confessions and prayers of the faith into Old English.⁹⁵ In the ninth century, God raised up a pair of brothers from Thessalonica, Constantine and Methodius, who used their powerful language skills and prayer to evangelize the Slavic peoples, translating the Bible and the church's prayer and worship and getting it blessed by the bishop of Rome, Pope Adrian II, by laying their work on the altar above the bones of the Apostle Peter.⁹⁶ Some of us have been raised on the idea that Scripture in everyday language (the 'vernacular') wasn't accessible in the Middle Ages, that it took brave revolutionaries like John Wycliffe, William Tyndale, and Martin Luther to defy authority and set God's word free at great cost; but these days, that “old fantasy” of a fallen institutional church opposed to the vernacular Bible has been “wholly discredited.”⁹⁷ Before any of those men had even been born, already “more-or-less complete Bible translations were in Europe-wide circulation,” followed soon by a large “amount of Christian biblical writing... composed, copied, and printed in nearly every medieval language.”⁹⁸   (Visit the Museum of the Bible in Washington DC, and you can even see a few of those old pre-Reformation vernacular Bibles among their many Latin counterparts.)

I could tell you of a man in the 1500s named Francis Xavier, sent half-reluctantly to southwest India, where “we couldn't understand each other, as I spoke Castillan and they spoke Malabar,” he said, “so I... sought out men who knew both languages..., and, by our joint efforts and with infinite difficulty, we translated the catechism into the Malabar tongue. This I learned by heart, and then I began to go through all the villages of the coast... I assembled them twice a day and taught them the Christian doctrine.”⁹⁹ After ministering there and in Indonesia, he led the first organized mission into Japan, writing that “if we all knew the language, I do not doubt but that a great many Japanese would become Christians. God grant that we may soon acquire it well, as we have already for some time begun to understand it,” even as his first Japanese convert “wrote out in his own native language a great many things concerning Christian mysteries and laws... and has diligently preached the gospel day and night to some relations and friends.”¹⁰⁰ By the time Francis died at age 46 while waiting for a ship to China, he may well have led more people to Jesus than almost anybody since the apostles (or so I've heard it said).

From the apostles until now, we've been filling the world with the gospel in many languages. And it's ongoing, and far from over. The Bible translator alliance illumiNations estimates that thousands of languages still have nearly no Scripture in them – something they're working diligently to fix. But all these languages praising Christ, with or without the Scriptures, are “a sign of the gathering together into the unity of the Spirit and of the way up to heaven,” not by a tower but by a cross of faith and hope and love.¹⁰¹ Down through these ages to now, “Christ joins and unites all into one faith through the gospel, even though the different languages remain.... If we both understand Christ, we mutually embrace and heartily kiss each other as fellow members,” Luther said, “but where Christ is not present, there the punishment of Babylon still prevails.”¹⁰² Our mission, then, is to rescue the babbling world from the 'punishment of Babel,' bringing the gospel in every language, facilitating worship and prayer in every language, restoring unity across every language barrier through the single doctrine and discipline of the Christ who is Lord of Every Language and the same peace and love woven by the Spirit who breathes one utterance!

The prophets left us with a promise that's happening before our eyes, and will happen more fully in the end. “At that time I will restore to the peoples a pure lip, that all of them may call upon the name of the LORD and serve him with one accord,” not with division (Zephaniah 3:9). All the earth, through this gospel, will become “a people humble and lowly..., nor shall there be found in their mouth a deceitful tongue..., and none shall make them afraid” (Zephaniah 3:12-13). For “the LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will quiet you by his love, he will exult over you with loud singing” (Zephaniah 3:17), and set us up all, at last, “for praise and for a name” (Zephaniah 3:19). Then we'll be “a great multitude that no one could number..., from all tribes and peoples and languages,” carrying the linguistic riches of the nations into the holy city, and crying out with one eternal polyglot shout that our God saves (Revelation 7:9-10; 21:24-26)! From and in every language, hallelujah, we will glory: Our God saves!

What a Nimrod...

Election day. But it's a Thursday, not a Tuesday – 1784, not 2024 – and the Rev. Joseph Huntington is stepping up to the Hartford plate, his sermon at the ready for Gov. Griswold and the assembled legislators. Just yesterday, ratified copies of the treaty were exchanged in Paris. So ended what one had called “a war which will one day shine more illustriously in the historic page than any which has happened since the time of Nimrod and the Giants.”¹ A new nation had been born, and Pastor Joseph's big brother Samuel had played his part – a signer of the Declaration, president of the Continental Congress, and now Lieutenant Governor of Connecticut. No time to dwell on family pride, though; the new state government was waiting on Pastor Joseph to begin.

God, said Pastor Joseph, “saw all his works, and all the works and ways of men, the whole business and result of the world, as clearly before he began to create as he will at the consummation of all things.”² Before light was born, from eternity he'd seen Eve's teeth break the fruit's skin, the ark splishing and splashing in the flood, brick atop brick at Babel. And God has worked, Joseph testified, through these twists and turns of history to sculpt the peoples of the earth in many ways, even through “the event of war foreign or intestine, and many new nations have rose out of blood.”³ Reflecting the sentiments of his day and place, Joseph declared how “we once loved Britain most dearly, but Britain the Tyrant we could not love. Our souls abhorred her measures.... We rose from the dust where we had long been prostrate – our breasts glowed with noble ardor – we invoked the God of our fathers, and we took the field.”⁴ And yet all this had been the mysterious wisdom of God, he said, for “God has often made the lawless ambition and proud spirit of men instrumental in making new kingdoms or dividing ancient ones. As in the case of Nimrod, a proud and lawless man, a man of blood in contempt of heaven, a mighty hunter before the Lord, he soon began a kingdom distinct for himself.”⁵

There's that funny name again: 'Nimrod.' He's mighty mysterious in the Bible, maybe because – as some think – there was a longer Nimrod epic that circulated of which the Bible only kept these highlights.⁶ His story's told now in just this little five-verse “digression of particular political significance.”⁷ Verse 10 is the first appearance of another key word in the Bible: 'kingdom.' Nimrod is “the first person described explicitly as having a kingdom,”⁸ which seems to make him “the first king mentioned in the Scriptures,”⁹ a pretty important position to be in. These few verses we've read cover “the beginnings of kingship and, thus, of political rule in the world.”¹⁰

So roll back the clock to the days of yore in the 'land of Shinar,' to ancient Sumer, where the people said that “when the kingship descended from heaven, the kingship was in Kish,”¹¹ a city a few miles east from a little riverside town called Babylon. But then, so they tell us, “Kish was smitten with weapons; its kingdom was brought to Uruk.”¹² Uruk had been “a hotbed of technological invention” long before 3000 BC, by which time they'd begun waging war.¹³ A sign of the turbulent early 2000s, they built a massive defensive wall, a feat credited to Uruk's larger-than-life ruler Gilgamesh, heir of kings Enmerkar and Lugalbanda. Among his notable successors was Lugalzagesi, who came in and raised Uruk to dominance by conquering Kish and many other cities of Sumer; his records claim the god Enlil “put all the lands at his feet and, from east to west, made them subject to him. … Enlil permitted him no rival; under him the lands rested contentedly, the people made merry.”¹⁴

Enter a man known to history as Sargon, 'True King' – we still haven't settled whether it's a name he was born with or adopted.¹⁵ He was a social outsider, not a Sumerian by blood or culture.¹⁶ Later stories told how his mom, a priestess illegally pregnant, made a basket and put her baby boy in it and floated him down the river, Moses style (cf. Exodus 2:3).¹⁷ These legends say that, after driving far down the Euphrates, a gardener fished him out of the water and adopted him, raising him to become cupbearer to King Ur-Zababa of Kish.¹⁸ Whatever the story, over 4300 years ago, Sargon took over the city of Kish while renoving another town further north, Agade, into “the first purpose-built capital” in the world.¹⁹ He marched his army south and, to hear him tell it, he “was victorious over Uruk in battle, conquered the city, captured Lugalzagesi king of Uruk in battle, and led him off to the gate of the god Enlil in a neck stock.”²⁰ In the process, Sargon says he “conquered fifty city governors with the mace of the god Ilaba,”²¹ “enabling him to rule all of Sumer to the headwaters of the [Persian] Gulf.”²² Thus “Uruk was smitten with weapons; its kingdom was brought to Agade.”²³

No king until Sargon had unified these many cities into “a single territorial state,”²⁴ and with Sargon came “the emergence of a new ideology of kingship,” no longer a shepherd of men but a hero on the battlefield.²⁵ In these conquests, he claims that “Sargon, king of the world, was victorious in 34 battles; he destroyed their city walls as far as the shore of the sea.”²⁶ He colonized Sumer with his own Akkadian people, who “saw themselves as dominating local populations rather than working pacifically with them.”²⁷ Not content with Sumer, he began to spread northward to the land later known as Assyria, waging a campaign northwest into Syria to the edges of the Mediterranean, and then later he fought the eastern powers in Iran.²⁸ People could readily imagine him saying: “Truly the mighty king, the king of battle, am I. No other king has yet gone where I have.”²⁹ Later, “in his old age, all the countries revolted against him and besieged him in Akkad,” but “Sargon went out, defeated his adversaries, annihilated them, and slew their very large army,” keeping his empire intact in his hands.³⁰ He died in the fifty-sixth year of his rule, likely in his eighties by then.

He left the throne to his son Rimush, who faced an immediate rebellion all over. He put it down with relish, claiming in campaigns against various rebellious city to have killed thousands of men, expelled thousands more, and taken thousands of prisoners captive³¹ – all in all, about a third of all adult men in the land did he subject to “cruel punishment, mass execution, or forced labor,” while confiscating massive tracts of land for his loyalists.³² He boasted of being “fully three times victorious over Sumer,” part of his own kingdom, “in battle.”³³ When he was assassinated after nine years, the throne was left to another son of Sargon, Manishtusu – or, as he put it, “the god Enlil made him great, called his name, and granted to him the scepter of kingship.”³⁴ He ruled fifteen years and waged battle overseas as far as Arabia,³⁵ but he was also a builder, enlarging temples in Nineveh.³⁶

His reign also ended by assassination, putting power in the hands of his son Naram-Sin, a man all too like his grandpa Sargon.³⁷ A “profoundly unpopular king,” he faced a huge rebellion by people fed up with his empire.³⁸ “All the four quarters revolted against him and confronted him,” his records say.³⁹ He brags that “he filled the Euphrates River with their bodies.”⁴⁰ Thus “he was victorious in nine battles in one year, and the kings whom they raised, he captured.”⁴¹ He “expanded the empire, quashed revolts, ruled for four decades, and eventually declared himself a living god..., a god made flesh.”⁴² “They built within Agade a temple to him,”⁴³ and he began spelling his name, “Naram-Sin the Mighty,” with the symbol for godhood tacked on;⁴⁴ he encouraged people to regard his late father as divine,⁴⁵ and flatterers named themselves Rimush-Is-My-God, as they'd already been renaming themselves Sargon-Is-My-God.⁴⁶ Naram-Sin was the first king to brag what a great hunter he was.⁴⁷ What Sargon, his sons, and his grandson built, the Akkadian Empire, was the world's “first attempt to exercise political control over an extended and diversified territory,”⁴⁸ an attempt widely resented by those under it.⁴⁹

Later kings of Assyria, which the prophets call “the land of Nimrod” (Micah 5:5), were obsessed with Sargon's legacy.⁵⁰ They imagined Sargon had laid down the gauntlet for his successors: “Lo, the king who wants to equal me: where I have gone, let him also go!”⁵¹ They thus used Sargon's memory as “ideological justification of an ever-expanding empire” of their own.⁵² And Genesis answers that memory by painting its picture of Nimrod.⁵³ We read that “Cush fathered Nimrod” (Genesis 10:8), even though Nimrod's story is nowhere near the Cush in Africa; probably, this bit is pasted in with a wink because Sargon got his start in Kish.⁵⁴ “The beginning of his kingdom was Babel” – part of the kingdom of Kish, in Sargon's day⁵⁵ – “and Uruk, and Akkad,” the other cities where Sargon became king, and “all of them in the land of Shinar,” Sumer and Akkad (Genesis 10:10).⁵⁶ After rooting his kingdom there, Nimrod “went into Assyria,” the land north of Shinar, “and built Nineveh, with the broad places of the city, and Kalhu, and the spring source between Nineveh and Kalhu, which is the great city” (Genesis 10:11-12) – both those cities being in Sargon's territory and later capitals of the Assyrian Empire.⁵⁷

Genesis 10:9 pictures Nimrod as “a champion warrior,”⁵⁸ “driven by a lust for domination,”⁵⁹ so that he becomes “a deceiver, an oppressor, and a destroyer of earthborn creatures.”⁶⁰ He “dared to usurp dominion over others that were not willing to allow it,”⁶¹ for “as a hunter behaves toward beasts, which are naturally wild and free, so did he oblige mankind to be in servitude and to obey him.”⁶² His achievements were through “murder and bloodshed,” and he “used tyranny to gain for himself a sovereignty that did not belong to him.”⁶³ Thus Nimrod “acquired his kingdom through civil might and not through justice.”⁶⁴ That all sounds very like Sargon & Sons.

For Nimrod had “begun to be a powerful one on the earth” (Genesis 10:8), reminding us of the disturbing folks before the flood who, born to the sons of God and daughters of man, were “the powerful ones who were of old” (Genesis 6:4). Looking back to them, Nimrod casts himself as a giant astride the world, a great hero winning glory, something more than a mere man.⁶⁵ And just like them, Nimrod's appearance in the Bible is an omen of a coming tragedy.⁶⁶ The words and themes used to describe Nimrod tie him closely to the story of Babel,⁶⁷ which naturally has led many readers through the years to put him on scene as the ringleader of that project,⁶⁸ with both stories being about “the imperial concentration of power.”⁶⁹ He offered his people a utopia, a city safe from floods and foes; he dangled the tower's upward rise as a beacon of progress.⁷⁰ But his real aim was to ape the powerful “men of the name” before the flood by making himself a legend.⁷¹ Kings often stamped their name and claim onto the bricks of their mighty works.⁷² This tower is to be a great imperial spectacle to “demonstrate the might, authority, and greatness – in short, the 'name' – of the regime.”⁷³

As early Americans read this story, “old Nimrod collected a nation of robbers” who “swiftly advanced beyond the line of justice, while crimson carnage and pale devastation stalked behind them through the land. Slavery and despotism were the effects of conquest.”⁷⁴ With that in mind, the bricks and mortar remind us of Israelites slaving at brick-making in a foreign land (Exodus 1:13-14), and given how Sargon & Sons forced captives to slave at their building projects, we wonder whether the builders of the tower are all acting as voluntarily as it seemed last week.⁷⁵ Could they be under Nimrod's thumb, their blood, sweat, and tears demanded by the state?

Sargon's empire was “bureaucratic and centralized,” imposing uniformity where there'd been none before.⁷⁶ The Assyrians after him bragged of imposing 'one mouth' on their diverse subjects, that is, unifying many peoples under the state agenda.⁷⁷ Infamously, “for totalitarian governments, conformity is the stuff of life.”⁷⁸ Gradually, indoctrination can lead to “unquestioning allegiance” from most subjects.⁷⁹ Dissenters from Nimrod's project, those who question the state, can expect pointed questions – and pointed swords – aimed back at them.⁸⁰ And so, through his “campaign for world domination” so audacious as to catch the sight of the LORD,⁸¹ Nimrod “corrupted the condition of the human way of life by a new way of living,” the way of the kingdom of man.⁸²

The very name 'Nimrod' is Hebrew for 'We shall rebel!' – he's a rebel against the LORD God.⁸³ No wonder Pastor Joseph dubbed Nimrod “a man of blood in contempt of heaven.”⁸⁴ For the sake of his heroic ventures, he was willing to profane the world, break all norms, defy deity in order to grasp power.⁸⁵ It's unsurprising that Christians, seeking a spiritual reading of the Bible, found that Nimrod “signifies figuratively the devil himself, the head of all evils,” who “scorned to be obedient to the will of his Maker” and thus “strove to obtain the citadel of God.”⁸⁶ From Nimrod, “the spirit of domination ran through the world like a raging plague.”⁸⁷

This story might seem irrelevant – after all, Sargon came to power so long ago that, if you went back even half that far, you'd have to wait a century and a half to hear angels sing to shepherds outside Bethlehem. But some early Jewish readers imagined Nimrod got his start through democratic election,⁸⁸ and he only “little by little transformed the state of affairs into a tyranny.”⁸⁹ And now we find ourselves poised in an election season of our own, with candidates for various offices promoted by political parties: Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Green, Solidarity, you name it. When our nation was yet dawning, Pastor Joseph referred to our elections as the time when “we choose such as we esteem men of the greatest wisdom and probity.”⁹⁰ But Pastor Joseph also warned that, if these United States weren't careful, “proud, selfish, and wicked” people will “lust for offices for which they are utterly unfit,” and to get them, politicians would “make or propagate a thousand lies to stir up the jealousy of the people, enrage the multitude, and clear the seats of honor for themselves,” the fruit of which might lead to any number of “land-defiling crimes,” not unlike Nimrod's.⁹¹ Whether Pastor Joseph's prophecy has come to pass or not, well... you be the judge.

“Such a great tempest of a time” as ours calls for great wisdom on our part to navigate it, understanding that “the chief intention of a ruler, as of... any private person” like ourselves, “should be to please God in his [or her] works.”⁹² Thankfully, Christians in ages past thought a lot about what a good political authority should be like. For starters, ideally, “royal power must... acknowledge priestly dignity as superior,” that is, the state should give the utmost respect and support to religion, not exclude it.⁹³ The Bible tells us that “a ruler who lacks understanding is a cruel oppressor” (Proverbs 28:16), and “the ruler will not be able to understand the duties of government fully if he does not know the reason why it was instituted.”⁹⁴ As we look at the candidates for office, we can ask ourselves questions like, “Who shows the most respect for people of faith? Who seems to better understand what our government is for? Which of these people seems to have the most wisdom in life?”

Christians also observed that political rulers do well “if they prefer to govern their own base desires more than to govern any peoples.”⁹⁵ They got that from the Bible, which advises that “whoever is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit is better than he who takes a city” (Proverbs 16:32). Nimrod might be a mighty man on earth, but his heroism falls short of turning the sword at his own inward passion and desire. Nimrod can conquer cities and countries, but greater is anybody who conquers his own spirit. Can you imagine a politician who'd rather lose an election than lose her temper, who prefers governing his heart to governing a nation? Christians have long said that, “where it is the practice to select the prince by vote,” voters should look for “calmness and equability of temperament and a sober disposition devoid of all rashness.”⁹⁶

Christians also said that any political system “should be so arranged as to remove from the king the opportunity of becoming a tyrant” like Nimrod, “and, at the same time, his power should be restricted so that he will not easily be able to fall into tyranny.”⁹⁷ As we try to navigate this tempest we're in, one question we might want to ask is, “Which of these people, if in office, would face the greatest opposition when tempted to overreach? Who will have the most eyes watching their every move, the loudest voices keeping them accountable?”

It might sound odd to American ears, but the classic Christian view is that “all the particular goods which men obtain, whether wealth or profit or health or skill or learning, are directed, as to their end, to the good of the community.”⁹⁸ And so “the further it departs from the common good, the more unjust the government will be.”⁹⁹ So good rulers won't use their position “to satisfy their personal animosities,” not to serve this or that special interest, not to cater even to the majority at the expense of the minority, nor vice versa.¹⁰⁰ A good ruler is chosen for “wisdom, a sense of justice, personal restraint, foresight, and concern for the public well-being.”¹⁰¹ In our day, this is even harder because we Americans can't even agree on what the good of a community is. A good ruler, though, is one who pursues the true common good, not a false common good such as homicide or mutilation under the guise of medical care, or racial prejudices under the guise of national solidarity.

Part of the common good includes preserving the country's unity, and “when it is removed and the community is divided against itself, social life loses its advantage and instead becomes a burden. It is to this end, therefore, that the ruler of a community ought especially to strive: to procure the unity of peace.”¹⁰² Nimrods are, paradoxically, the opposite: they “prohibit those things which create fellowship among men.”¹⁰³ America has been losing social cohesion and trust for decades, or, as one sociologist put it, “without at first noticing, we have been pulled apart from one another and from our communities,”¹⁰⁴ until, as in the late Roman empire, “all are distant in affection from each other.”¹⁰⁵ Are any candidates trying to bridge that gap in affection? Who aspires to foster fellowship? Who's a unifier?

Then, since “the good of the community should not be established for a particular length of time only,” wise men tell us that a good political leader will “ensure that successors take the place of those who are faltering,” that is, they'll make the kingdom stable over time.¹⁰⁶ Nimrod didn't do that: Sargon's sons both fell to assassins, and his era's “wave of social change” led to deep “political instability.”¹⁰⁷ Unlike the Akkadians and Assyrians, we don't have a hereditary monarchy; what we do have is a political process that, as one expert puts it, “depends on responsive representative institutions, fair elections, active civic participation, freedom of expression, and adherence to constitutional norms.”¹⁰⁸ As we try to navigate this tempest with wisdom, we ask ourselves, “Which candidate sounds best for supporting that? Will this person act to preserve our process as trustworthy, reliable, fair, and respected? Will he or she make America more politically stable for the future?”

Another threat to a community “arises from within, and consists of perversity of will” when “some people are negligent in carrying out the duties which the commonwealth requires, or even damage the peace of the community when they transgress against justice and disturb the peace of others”; hence, a good political leader will “restrain the men subject to him from iniquity by laws and commands, penalties and rewards.”¹⁰⁹ So as we navigate, we ask, “Will this person hold other officials to do what the public actually needs done? Will this person punish people who disturb others unjustly through crime?”

And then “the third obstacle to the preservation of the commonwealth comes from an external cause, as when the peace is undone by the invasion of enemies,” an issue ancient Israel often had to face (2 Kings 13:20).¹¹⁰ The responsibility of their king was to defend people from outside aggression (1 Samuel 14:47); they wanted to be able to say, “The king delivered us from the hand of our enemies” (2 Samuel 19:9). (Here, arguably, Nimrod excelled... discounting.all the times Sargon, Rimush, and Naram-Sin had to fight their own subjects!) So a good political leader, wise men said, will “furnish the community subject to him with protection against enemies.”¹¹¹ As we navigate our present tempest, we simply ask, “Will this candidate do that? Will he or she make Americans safe?”

But the reason why communities exist isn't just for safety. We were made social creatures “to live according to virtue,” and the whole point of “human association is a virtuous life.”¹¹² Nimrods notoriously aim to “prevent their subjects from becoming virtuous and increasing in nobility of spirit.”¹¹³ But a good political leader will use the powers of government to lead Americans toward being better people, toward rising above our base desires of the flesh, toward loving what's good – something we're not used to thinking of law being for, in our American way of thinking. And, of course, the best political leaders of all “make their power the servant of God's majesty, using it to spread the worship of God as much as possible.”¹¹⁴ How very unlike Nimrod that would be!

Within the bounds of encouraging people toward virtue, political leaders are called to promote prosperity. Yet early Christians mourned that, in late Rome, many citizens were “captives under an appearance of liberty.”¹¹⁵ Part of the reason was “tax collectors'... incessant and even continuous destruction,” so that the state would “extort tribute from the poor man for the taxes of the rich, and the weaker carry the load for the stronger.”¹¹⁶ On the other hand, medieval Christians worried that 'democracy' was when “the common people oppress the rich by force of numbers,” so that “the whole people will be like a single tyrant.”¹¹⁷ In the present tempest, we might ask, “Who is calling us to be our best selves as a community?  Who will lift undue burdens off the poor, without oppressing others? Who is likeliest to help our community prosper?”

Of course, certainly many candidates will claim they'll do many of these things, and more. One ancient source remarked that Nimrod's aim was to make all people “continuously dependent on his own power,” promising the state's provision against all ills.¹¹⁸ Just so, in a democracy, “the voters listen during every election year to a constant litany of promises,” few of which are anything but convenient illusions.¹¹⁹ The Bible advises us, on the other hand, to “put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation” (Psalm 146:3). 

Even so, what you do and I do, if anything, might still lead us to somebody who's a little bit of a Nimrod. But here's the Bible's good news. Everything Nimrod does is “in the sight of the LORD” (Genesis 10:9), always subject to God's sovereignty. The LORD, not any Nimrod, is “actually king of the world.”¹²⁰ “The LORD has established his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all” (Psalm 103:19). Satan, Sargon, Caesar, President – they're all living in the shadow of the LORD's throne up above. If they have any sense, then, “the LORD is to be feared by the kings of the earth” (Psalm 76:12). Whatever happens this month, “it is [God] who gives earthly kingdoms to the godly and the ungodly alike, according to his pleasure..., and if his reasons are hidden, does that mean that they are unjust?”¹²¹ Even as God's nation was oppressed by the rulers of the earth, they whispered to every tyrant, nimrod! – 'we will rebel,' one day, when salvation comes!¹²² For one day, God would “shake the heavens and the earth and overthrow the thrones of kingdoms” (Haggai 2:21-22). And that's a “divine determination which shall not be frustrated.”¹²³

Of Sargon, it was said of old that those “who are with him are twelve,” and that as long as he had divine support, “Sargon will let his voice resound in the land.”¹²⁴ And so, in the fullness of time, the LORD stooped down into humanity, and Christ let his voice resound in the land, “proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God; and the twelve were with him” (Luke 8:1). Only his kingdom means healing and liberty for all, it means righteousness and peace and joy wild enough to shake heaven and earth (Luke 7:22; Romans 14:17). And where Sargon and his twelve chiefs approached the forest wood, where he “bowed down and readied his weapons” and “offered the pure sacrifices” to seek victory by conquest,¹²⁵ Jesus, deserted by his twelve chiefs, didn't fear to approach the wooden cross, where he bowed his head and readied not weapons of carnal warfare but a humble heart (Philippians 2:8). This True King offered a purer sacrifice than Sargon could understand, rising to present his whole life and death to God for his people, and so, this complete, Jesus “sat down at the right hand of God” (Ephesians 5:2; Hebrews 10:12-13). 

Now it's like Cotton Mather said it: “The people of God may need some shakes be given unto the world..., but such a mighty arm has our Savior. … If he do but utter his voice..., there shall everything be done that his people can wish for. A powerful Nimrod that has made nations to shake with the terror of his arms: our Lord Jesus Christ can easily shake such a one down into his grave.”¹²⁶ And one day, the shout will ring out true and clear: “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever!” (Revelation 11:15). Therefore, “let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe” (Hebrews 12:28). Amen.