Tower of Babel: Sin Spreads to National Proportions

1. Tower of Babel: Sin Spreads to National Proportions • Last of the Pre-history stories • Humans trying again to make it on their own without God • Nations try to build a tower to the heavens to make a name for themselves • God is angered and confuses their language and scatters them all over • Shows how sin has spread to effect nations now • Nations seeking glory in power, might, wealth, superiority, and dominance • No thought of God in the project • First 11 chapters of Genesis • Deal with God’s good purpose for the world • Human’s screwed it up by trying to be equal to God • Sin spreads through the world • World in a terrible state and in need of God’s salvation

2. The word “Babel”: • Hebrew form of the name “Babylon” • “Babili” in the Babylonian language • Meaning “Gate of the gods” • Hebrew word “Balil” meaning “he confused” sounds similar As to the biblical story: • It references the Temple Towers (Ziggurats) of ancient Babylon (Most famous one: E-sag-ila meaning “the house that raises high its head.”) • Illustrates man’s increasing wickedness (sinfulness) • Humans are creating a culture separate from God • The story provides an imaginative explanation of the origin of the different languages among various peoples • It is an artificial explanation of the name “Babylon”

3. E-sag-ila meaning “the house that raises high its head.” temple of the Babylonian supreme god Marduk. Originally, Marduk was the god of Babylon, but in the eighteenth century BCE, when this city became the capital of Babylonia, he became the supreme god of the Mesopotamian pantheon. As such, he was recognized by the gods of the cities that were subjected by the Babylonian kings. North of the Esagila was the Etemenanki, the 'Foundation of heaven on earth', better known to us as the 'tower of Babel' of Genesis 11. This temple tower (or ziggurat) was 92 meters high and had seven levels.

4. The Tower of Babel Of the ziggurat built in Babylon at the time of Hammurapi we know little but there is a large amount of documentation of the ziggurat that existed in the time of Nebuchadnezzar II (605-562 BC) who deported the Jews. This was a ziggurat already old by the time of his reign and could have been the same as the ziggurat that existed in the reign of Hammurapi. Its Babylonian name was "Etemenanki" which means in English "House of the platform of Heaven and Earth". This temple is often associated with the famous Tower of Babel which men built to rival God. Indeed so it must have seemed to an Israelite observer whose cities were often no more than the size of our villages. They would be confronted first with the size of the city, which encompassed, at that time, both sides of the Euphrates. Babylon in the time of Nebuchadnezzar II was large even by our standards. In the city they would see the ziggurat, which would seem to them, usually living in single story houses, to reach almost to heaven. Many Jews would have seen it with their own eyes when they were deported to Babylon in about 600 BC. This would have no doubt reminded them of the events at the Tower of Babel. The Bible reveals very little about the ziggurat. There are other sources outside of the Bible that reveal what a Ziggurat is. We have a Babylonian tablet that gives us the dimensions of the ziggurat at the time of Nebuchadnezzar II. The ziggurat’s condition declined and it was in ruins when Alexander arrived in 331 BC.

5. Marduk, the patron god of Babylon, who acquires the “tablets of fate” in his primordial battle preceding the creation.