Theology in the Raw - Old Testament in the Raw Week 5: Genesis 6-9

Episode Date: March 5, 2020

This week, we dive into the flood of Genesis 6-9, God’s covenant with Noah, the shady stuff that went on with Noah and his son Ham, and God’s promised seed of redemption named Abram. Support Preston Support Preston by going to patreon.com Connect with Preston Follow him on Twitter @PrestonSprinkle Check out his website prestonsprinkle.com If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave a review.

🎵 Welcome to, I don't know what week this is, week, I think it's my fourth, no, fifth week maybe doing this, so we are still going slowly through Genesis. I keep saying we're going to pick up the speed. I will try to make that a reality over the next week or two. So we ended last week in Genesis 6. We covered the rest of Genesis 3 through Genesis 6, 1 to 4, where we had this strange passage about the sons of God taking as wives daughters of men, which raises the question, who are these sons of God? We talked about at least three of the main interpretive suggestions, proposals that people have made.

And I argued that I think sons of God here does refer to angelic beings. Sometimes we use the phrase angel as a broad brush description of spiritual beings. But those are two different things. Spiritual being or angelic. I mean, I could say angelic being is a broad category of spiritual being. Within that broad category, you have angels, you have cherubim, you have seraphim, and then you got the bad ones, the demons or whatever on the other side. So angel is not a catch-all category for spiritual being. Angel is one kind of spiritual being.

And we know this. I mean, seraphim, when we see a seraphim described in the Bible, the first time we see that is in Isaiah 6, where seraphim have six wings, and they're praising God, and they look kind of like, you know, I guess what would we think of as an angel? But when we see an angel in the Bible, what do angels look like typically when we see them in the Bible? People. Men. Half the time people don't even know they're talking to an angel.

We'll see in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, you know, there's just a couple guys show up at Lot's house and the men of Sodom want to abuse those two people. And they didn't know they were angels. You know, they just look like men. Almost every time in the Bible, angels, specifically angels, look like they're manifested as men. Now, what do they look like when they're up in heaven? We really, I don't know.

We really don't know. Cherubim, if you saw a cherubim in your house, you would have to, you would freak out. You'd have to change your clothes. They have four heads, a face of a man, a face of a cow, a face of an eagle. They have wings with eyes all over it. These are freaky, freaky, intimidating-looking creatures. We see a description in Ezekiel 1 and Ezekiel 10

of a cherubim. If you saw a cherubim, you wouldn't mistake that for a human. When you see an angel, it looks like a man. So anyway, that's a whole tangent that has nothing to do with... So sons of God, some kind of spiritual being, maybe it's an angel, maybe whatever, that had relations with women. And it passage doesn't exactly say that the Nephilim, in verse 4, were the offspring of this union. That's often the assumption. And I think it's a valid assumption. This is the early Jewish interpretation assumed that the Nephilim were the offspring.

These kind of gigantic beings that were the offspring of these angelic beings and humans. But if you look really closely at the text, I'm a big fan of just acknowledging what does the text exactly say, and then maybe what are some implications from the text. The text just says in verse 4 that the Nephilim were on the earth,

both in those days and afterwards, when the sons of God came into the daughters of man. Does that mean they're the offspring? Maybe. It doesn't exactly say that, though. Just to, you know. And the children born to them were the powerful men of old, the famous men, or the men of renown. In the Hebrew, it's the gibberim. Gibber is a Hebrew word that refers to like a man,

but more like a strong man, like a masculine man, you know, a warrior, a gibberim. So these were the powerful gibberim, the famous men of old. Now that is referring to the offspring. Now are the gibbereim, the men of renown, the same thing as the Nephilim? Maybe.

But just the text doesn't make that crystal clear. So I mean, I think, I'm very convinced that this interpretation number three is the best understanding of the passage, primarily because we have several New Testament references to this passage. They all seem to say that this is referring to angels. And I would say this is, there's a good chance that this is the fall of the portion of the angels, or angelic beings. So when we say demons used to be angels, but they

fell, I think this might be that fall when they fell. Again, this is how every first century Jew in the time of Jesus, that's what they believed about the demonic world. And it seems like the New Testament endorses that belief. So this strange event precedes the flood. I think, you know, why is it here? It's almost like if these four verses weren't here, it's almost like we wouldn't, the flow of the story just kind of goes seamlessly into Noah and the flood in verse 5.

I think this passage just shows just how bad things have gotten. Even the angels are fallen, are falling, and they're, you know, they're sinful. But then we read a description in verse 5 and following about how bad things have gotten. There's just wickedness and violence everywhere, and so God says he needs to basically wipe out mankind and start over with one person, Noah and his three kids and their wives. So it's almost like Noah is portrayed as a, if I can use this phrase, a new Adam, or some people say a second Adam, an Adam-like figure, a person through whom God's going to populate the earth and ultimately through whom he's going to send that seed of redemption

that we talked about from Genesis 3.15 last time. And we'll see again, even after the flood, how Noah is portrayed very much how Adam is described in the Garden of Eden. Genesis 9 is almost like Genesis 2 and 3 all over again. We've got lots of kind of allusions back to the Garden of Eden so Noah is kind of seen as a a Adam-like

figure now there's most of you, I mean if you were raised in the church or you've been a Christian for more than a week, you probably don't know the general gist of the story of the flood so I don't want to go through it. There's lots of historical questions about the flood.

Could all the animals have fit in the ark? How did that even work? Was it a worldwide global flood or a local flood is something that people debate. I would say that the text does seem to indicate that it is a global flood. And I don't even know. I don't know. I'm not a geologist. I don't know if saying there was a global flood way back when, if that conflicts with the geological record or not. I really't even know. I don't know. I'm not a geologist. I don't know if saying there was a global flood way back when,

if that conflicts with the geological record or not. I really don't know. The text does seem to say, because it says the waters covered all the high mountains everywhere under the heavens. Like it seems to be a pretty broad description. Now, some people say, well, the author is just saying from their vantage point. They didn't know about the entire how big the earth was they just knew kind of the whole Middle Eastern territory you know from like modern-day Turkey down to Egypt or maybe even northern Africa like the flood covered what they knew of the known world at that time again I don't I

don't that's a possible interpretation it just you do have that statement how covered the high mountains everywhere under the heavens. It seems to be implied that it covered the whole earth. But again, maybe we would, you know, I'm not a huge fan of if something seems to conflict with science or history, to just real quickly just ditch what the Bible says. Like I want to say, well, what does that mean? Like is it proven that there couldn't have been a global flood? I would really want to look into that before I just

embrace what a geologist says and not the Bible. Scott, you have any thoughts on that? Isn't that the equivalent of when King David was saying, I've never seen a righteous man beg for bread? You know, after people take that out of context, saying a righteous man would never go hungry. Oh, yeah.

Well, you do have, yeah, you do have, and this is just a fact. Sometimes I'll say, like, here's where I interpret the Bible, or other times I'm just going to say, this is just a fact. The Bible, like any book or piece of literature, does use hyperbole. Sometimes it overstates things to make a point. I mean, when we'll see in chapter 11, with the Tower of Babel, it says, you know, when all the people come together and God says, nothing that they planned will be impossible for them now. Does that literally mean that nothing is impossible for humanity?

Like, can we breathe stars into existence and make a circle around? You know, like, well, no, it's just it's saying that they're going to be really, really powerful if they come together as a community. And there's just loads of examples that we can use. You know, just normal language of any culture uses hyperbole, overstating something to make a point. So, yeah, is that kind of what you're getting at, Scott? I mean, it could, you know, the water's covered all the high mountains everywhere. It could be hyperbole. It feels like they're going out of their way to make a more direct point.

But, yeah, I don't, I don't, some people get way hung up on this. Like, our faith rests on the fact that it was a global flood. I'm like, if your faith rests on that, then your faith is going to probably be shipwrecked. Because you're hanging on something that's not unimportant, but our faith doesn't hang on whether this statement was a hyperbole or not. Does anybody have that? I keep referencing it, and now I can't. Where it covered all the high mountains everywhere. In an older Bible, I used to have it highlighted and now I can't. 719. Then the water surged even

higher on the earth and all the high mountains under the whole sky were covered. Is that under the whole sky globally or just the sky in their region? I'm just going to take it at face value, under the whole sky globally or just the sky in their region? I'm just going to take it at face value, under the whole sky. That seems to be the implied meaning, but maybe it was local.

As far as all the animals fitting on the ark, I don't know. It says all the animals are on the ark. What about elephants? You know, they take up a lot of space. Well, what if they just had little baby elephants? I don't know. You know, I'm just going to take the Bible at face value and not get, I don't think there's anything here that really demands that this couldn't be a historical event. In fact, this isn't the only flood account in ancient history.

Do you guys know that? We have other accounts of a massive flood. There's one, probably the most famous one, is called the Gilgamesh Epic. There's one, probably the most famous one, is called the Gilgamesh Epic. Gilgamesh Epic, I think it dates back to around 1000 BC. Don't quote me on that. I think it comes from kind of the Babylonian region. That's where that story was recorded.

And it talks about a massive flood. And it talks about a guy that had a boat and sent out doves at the end of the flood. And some people say, oh my gosh, like the Bible is just borrowing from this story. Like some people say that other ancient accounts of the flood disproves the Bible. I've never understood that logic. I mean, it's like, if there was actually a worldwide flood, wouldn't you expect it to leave its imprint on other cultures and religions in the ancient world? So the fact that other cultures, non-Israelite cultures, talk about a global flood in very similar ways that the Bible does, to me, it just strengthens the historicity of the Bible,

doesn't diminish it. What's interesting is, in the Gilgamesh epic, I can't believe I'm waving my glasses around like that. I feel like such a, I feel like my dad right now. Did you notice that? Did you? We're aging. Get old.

I need a big... We're getting old. I'm 44. I swear, the day I turned 40, everything went blurry. And then now, yeah, anyway. Here's what's interesting. If you look at, and we talked about this before with the creation account. When you look at other ancient accounts of the flood and then read the biblical account of the flood and set those other stories as kind of a backdrop. Because surely Moses writing this was aware of those other accounts. I think they were pretty widespread.

They were, you know, through oral tradition, these other descriptions of the flood were kind of in the air. So it's interesting that Noah records the flood story probably in response to, or almost correcting, these other accounts. One of the things that you see in the Gilgamesh epic is that the gods, because they were more polytheistic, they believed in multiple gods, the gods got really annoyed at humanity because they were more polytheistic, they believed in multiple gods, the gods got really annoyed at humanity because they were so loud. And the gods just wanted to sleep, and they couldn't sleep, and they just flew off the handle and wiped them out with a flood. What a different account of the biblical story,

where it's out of God's grief over sin, and his long, his patience. Remember, Noah was preaching for years and years and years, and God gave humanity, I mean, a long time to turn from the wicked ways. So there was a long period of grace, and then out of grief for sin, God pours out his wrath. But then he loves humanity, so he preserves one man so that he can start over again and give him another try and have him repopulate the earth, and so you see, you don't see an arbitrary God just flying off the handle. Sometimes we think that of God, though, right? We just, we think of, you know, some old guy up in the sky that doesn't, you know, doesn't really care about us, except when we do something bad, then he gets kind of frustrated and whacks us, and then,

you know, tells us to shape up, and that's just not the portrait we see here. At the same time, I've got four kids, and so we have, children's Bibles in the house. And one of the things that I actually didn't like is every time children's Bibles talk about the flood, you have jolly old St. Noah with his floating zoo and all these cats running around. It has such a happy-go-lucky kind of point to it. And a lot of that's just marketing, right? You can't sell a children's Bible unless you have animals. Kids like animals, and so they're going to, you know, it's just, there's, but this is like the Holocaust on steroids.

Well, I shouldn't use that analogy because it's not Hitler, but I mean, this is a horrific event. I mean, people drowning and screaming and clawing at the boat. You know, if you really picture, you know, what actually happened here, it's horrific. It's sad, but it's sad ultimately because humanity has for decades and years and years just rebelled against their creator who wants to have a relationship with them. And God is a God of love. God is a God of grace. He is also a God of wrath. And I know in the year 2020, in some places, we don't even like

to say that, but that's just, you can't read the Bible and not believe that wrath is not, judgment is not part of God's character. So the flood happens, and there's loads of details here you can read. Are there any questions about the flood, just in general? Anything I've mentioned so far, or anything in your own reading or thinking that you have questions about? I'm not sure there's always going to be an answer to our questions, especially there's only a couple chapters describing it. In Gilgamesh, the extent of the damage is extreme, isn't it? Ooh, that's a good question. I don't know. I don't know the extent of the damage. I don't, well, I almost said I don't think it was wiping out almost every human, but I'm not sure on that,

actually. It could be, yeah. I haven't read it in a long, long time. Some of these texts are really hard to read. I remember reading through a long time ago and I was like, yeah, you get bits and pieces, but it's not like it's a it's an easy story to follow. It's good to read, like if you go on even like Wikipedia, I don't always recommend Wikipedia, but if you just go to the Gilgamesh,

it'll summarize it and give you the gist of it. Yeah. So I guess here's one of the things, especially like speaking with my kids, for example, about this and what I'm hearing. Even if this wasn't true or it was story form or whatever, it doesn't really change a whole lot past this, correct? I mean...

If it was more of a myth, an untrue, like a well-known fable that the Bible is simply referring to? Correct. So that is a view. In fact, Genesis 1 through 11, this whole first section, there are people who, I will say, at least some people who do take the Bible seriously, but they will say this is, Genesis 1 to 11 is drawing on ancient myths that they're not historically true. Adam and Eve and all the, and they refer, you know, they would include most of the stories in Genesis 1 to 11 is not a historical document. Yeah, I don't take that view.

But I wouldn't necessarily... Yeah, I think somebody could have that view and still find theological truth in this passage. Because, I mean, think about the Good Samaritan. Is the Good Samaritan true? The story like the Good Samaritan. Is the Good Samaritan true? The story of the Good Samaritan. Well, it kind of depends on what you mean by true. It's a parable. Jesus made it up.

The Good Samaritan will not be in heaven. He's a figment of Jesus's imagination. So he's not recording a historical event, but he's making a theological point. So the Bible does, it's at least possible that the Bible could say something that's not intended to be a historical record and yet still contain theological truth. So, yeah, again, I do think there's enough evidence that this is a recording actual history. And some people who say it's not historical are writing off the Bible. They're just like, the Bible, the whole thing is just kind of a bunch of myths or whatever. And obviously I wouldn't take that view. But I do know some people who say, no, from Genesis 12 onward, that's very historical. But this section is drawing

on these ancient myths. And again, while I disagree with that, I don't think it's necessarily like they're just burning the Bible or something. Yeah. Nobody knows for sure because nobody was there. But there is a... I know in my education growing up, all I heard was the evolutionary point of view. And I came in contact with a group of men. They're now known as the Institute of

Creation Research. Oh yeah, yeah. It was founded by Dr. Henry Morris who had a PhD in hydrology and Dr. Dwayne Gish who had a PhD in biochemistry. And there was a theologian, Whitcomb, who was in that too. But they give a scientific explanation of how these things, many questions that we have about this whole flood experience, and how is it possible that it could have happened. How is it possible that it could have happened? And they go to some pretty definitive arguments about how it could be true from a scientific point of view. It doesn't mean that it did, but it says you don't have to throw away your intellect to believe the biblical does reflect or anything in Genesis, early Genesis. So

if anybody's interested in that, it's the Institute of Creation Research. They have a lot of books on how these things could be true. Yeah, ICR, Institute of Creation. I remember a long time ago, gosh, 20 years ago, I remember doing a lot of reading from, I think Henry Morris was one who I read a lot on, and

there was another book that showed, I love the way you put who I read a lot on, and there was another book that yeah, showed, I love the way you put it too, like, hey, let's just be an objective observer, like, if we just let aside our commitment to the truth of the Bible, just historically, what the Bible is talking about here is very valid, and isn't disproven by science. And again, I think the fact that we have other flood accounts and other religions kind of adds support to that. Whenever you see an outside religion kind of support what the Bible's saying, that just adds more credibility to the Bible. So theological point. Again, remember our very first

Sunday, while we, I think, mentioning the historical stuff and working through some that's important, we ultimately need to ask, why? What is God trying to tell us about himself through the story? So it demonstrates God's hatred of sin, sovereign control over creation and his relentless desire to have a relationship with humanity. And so we see God making a covenant. A covenant just means an agreement with Noah here. Some covenants are unilateral, one directional, they're a promise. Other covenants are bilateral. Or if you do this, then I will do this. You keep your half of the bargain, and I'll keep my half of the bargain. It's a conditional covenant.

Other covenants are more unconditional. This one seems to be unconditional or unilateral. God is just saying, I am not going to do this again. I'm not going to wipe out creation through a flood again. And his covenant here is, it's almost spoken, it's not just to humanity, but it's almost like a covenant with all of creation. In chapter 8, verse 1, it says, God remembered Noah. That's not just, oh yeah, I forgot about that guy, but like,

he remembered him in a relational sense. Uh, I want to reenter this relationship with Noah. God remembered Noah as well as the wildlife and all the livestock that were with him in the ark. God saved not just seven people, but you know, two of every, uh, animals. So they, they would also repopulate the earth. Um, uh, let's see. animals, so they would also repopulate the earth. Let's see.

You have, oh, I don't have it in my PowerPoint, but maybe in my notes. In chapter 9, after the flood, you have another somewhat strange passage here. In Genesis Genesis 9 verses 1 through, oh sorry, well 9, so God makes,

reaffirms his covenant with Noah in chapter 9 verses 1 through 17. This is God's covenant with Noah. And you see a lot of things here that reflect Genesis 1 and 2. You see on a couple of occasions at least, God saying, Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth in verse 1, in verse 7. He makes a covenant in verse 9 and 10 with Noah, his descendants, and also all the living creatures here. So it's almost like a reboot of Genesis 1 and 2. He's going to start over with a new Adam.

His name's Noah. And maybe he's going to be the snake-killing seed. You know, if you read the unfolding of Genesis as if you don't know the rest of the story, you would guess like, man, we already saw Noah singled out in the genealogy of chapter five. Remember, Lamech gave birth to Noah in chapter five, verse 29. And he's like, this one's going to bring us rest from the agonizing labor of our hands that was cursed by the ground that God had cursed. This one's going to relieve the curse. Well, this is like the seed of Genesis 3.15 that we were promised.

And so now maybe Noah is going to be the guy. Maybe he's the new Adam. Maybe he's going to step on the head of the snake, bring us back to Eden, and we're all going to live happily ever after. Step on the head of the snake. Bring us back to Eden. And we're all going to live happily ever after. Well, that goes south pretty quickly in verses 18, chapter 9, verse 18 and following.

Noah is a man of the soil. He plants a vineyard, drank some of the wine, got drunk, and then he lay naked in his tent. Verse 21, I don't know how many years that would have taken, but it's just a quick overview, right? Planted some grapes, made some wine, got drunk. It's like, wow, that takes several years, I think, for that whole thing to pan out. But he lays inside his tent naked, and Ham, the father of Canaan,

that's an interesting... Why does it matter who his son is who's not even really born yet? Or is he born? Maybe he's born. The father of Canaan. Well, we know about Canaan because of the Canaanites. So they all come from Canaan, whose father is Ham,

who's going to do this evil deed. And it says he saw his father naked and told his two brothers outside. Then Shem and Japheth came and covered their father's nakedness. And it says at the end of verse 23 that their faces were turned away and they did not see their father naked. Verse 24, when Noah awoke from his drinking and learned what his youngest son had done to him, then he said, cursed be Canaan. Basically, cursed are you and your offspring.

But this kind of looks forward now to, it's kind of like a foreshadow of the Canaanites, this massive group of people occupying the land which we're going to read about you know in a few chapters that are a really really wicked people i mean just historically the canaanites become one of the from little evidence we have they become some of the most evil wicked societies on on earth so what you know what's going on here what happened to noah what did ham do to him we we don't know there's been several suggestions um probably the one that

um most people go with is that this is like an incestuous thing that his son raped his father um other people say no he just you know looked upon his father's nakedness and that was especially shameful back then for a son to do that. The reason why the whole nakedness theme here, nakedness, uncovering someone's nakedness can be what they call a euphemism, a nice way of saying, referring to sexual relations. We see this in Leviticus 18, Leviticus 20, where it says, do not uncover your father's nakedness. And then it even says, like, you know, by sleeping with his wife. Don't sleep with your mothers, you know. So uncovering nakedness can have kind of a double meaning here.

Or maybe it's just the literal. Like, that's all that he did. He just shamed his dad. We really don't know. I think the incest interpretation is probably what's going on here. Either way, the main point is, okay, just like Adam fell, and in Adam's fall, you see a theme of nakedness, right? Remember, they were naked ashamed and then they were, then they sinned and then they were ashamed that they were naked and they cover themselves. You see that theme here too. The whole nakedness theme, because Noah again is walking in the ways of his ancestor, Adam. We all walk in the ways of our ancestor, Adam. Abraham is another one who might be the snake killing seed. No, he fails too. Isaac, he fails.

Jacob really fails. Joseph is maybe the best we have in Genesis, but he's not of the line of promise. We'll talk about this in a couple weeks. But the genealogical line that we've been talking about actually doesn't go through Joseph, who's probably the best of the 12 sons of Jacob. It actually goes through Judah, who happens to be the worst of the 12 sons of Jacob. God loves working through messy situations and really, really messed up people to accomplish his redemption. But we're getting ahead of ourselves here.

Any questions so far? Sometimes I forget to pause. Okay, so after this we have the two next things in Genesis 1-11 are the table of nations in chapter 10 and then the tower of Babel in chapter 11. These two passages are probably flip-flopped chronologically.

It seems that the tower of Babel, when everybody was coming together with one language in one spot, and then God interrupts their language, and then they spread out over the earth. It seems that chapter 10, the table of nations, is describing

the aftermath of the Tower of Babel. And you might say, well, wait a minute, can the Bible do that? The Bible does that all the time, where it will discuss things out of chronological order. It's just not a big deal. The Gospel of Luke, especially the middle part of Luke, is notorious for that. Jesus, there's events that are not arranged in chronological order.

Or even Genesis 1 and 2. Genesis 1 talks about the seven days of creation, and then Genesis 2 goes back and just looks at the sixth day. So it's like Genesis 1 went further ahead than Genesis 2 goes back. It's not a big deal that these would be out of chronological order. It makes more sense that Genesis 10 is describing the aftermath of

Genesis 11. Okay, Tower of Babel. Let me just read this. It says, at one time, the whole earth had the same language and vocabulary. As people migrated from the east, they found a valley

in the land of Shinar and settled there. Shinar will later become Babylon. Modern day, what is that? Iraq, right? They said to each other, come, let us make oven-fired bricks. And they used brick for stone and asphalt for mortar. And they said, come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the sky, is how my translation says it.

Top in the sky is how my translation says it. Some translations say whose top reaches the heavens. Let us make a name for ourselves. Otherwise, we will be scattered over the whole face of the earth. We don't want to be scattered. We want to hunker down in one place. And you say, well, seems fine. Who cares, you know? Well, it matters because all throughout Genesis 1 to 11,

God keeps saying, be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, cover the earth. Remember, humanity, we are God's idols. And he wants his image to fill the entire earth so that the whole earth radiates the glory of the divine image in us around the earth. He doesn't want us to hunker down. Not that staying put in Boise is bad. I'm just within the movement of Genesis 1 to 11, that's he wants us to spread out. So the fact that they don't want to spread out, they want to hunker down here, that just goes against God's ongoing command. Then the Lord God came down to look over the city and the tower that the men were building. You know, they build this massive tower with its top way up into the heavens is how it's described.

And I think that the Bible does have humor. And God, it's like God puts on his glasses and like, what's going on down there? He's like, oh, that's cute. Look at that little tower down there. And these humans are like, look how powerful we are. And it's just, gosh, how sad is it when we show off our strength, which in the eyes of God is nothing but a, you know, pee on the ground. A pee, like not, I should have used another, yeah. The Lord said, if they had begun to do this as one people, all having the same language, and here is that statement, it's a little tough to swallow, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.

So obviously that's an exaggeration. God's not saying that we humans can do anything we want to do. We can fly, we can throw the earth over Pluto. It's an overstatement no matter how you want to frame it. But I think it does speak to the fact that because we bear God's image, and because we are relational, corporate beings, when we come together, that is a powerful thing. When Christians are isolated by themselves,

we are very weak when we come together. When any humans come together, there are great things we can do. And if we do that under the sovereignty and lordship of Jesus, then all the more reason to live out our Christian faith in community together and not as isolated individuals.

Come, let us go down there and confuse their language so that they will not understand one another's speech. So from there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth and they stopped building the city. Therefore its name is called Babylon. This is the first time we see Babylon. For there the Lord confused the language of the whole earth and from there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth. Which again, if you go back to the previous chapter, I think that describes the beginning of the scattering of them over the whole earth.

So that Japheth goes towards Turkey and Europe. Europe. Ham, no, yeah, Ham goes to the Canaan area and also south into northern Africa area, and then Shem kind of settles in Middle East and goes more eastward. I had a map, but I don't have it on here. I had a map kind of showing how it spread out. What is the Tower of Babel? This is a reconstruction of what's called an ancient ziggurat. Let me go over. Here's kind of a model of it, like a reconstructed model. Here's a kind of a model of it, like a reconstructed model of the Tower of Babel is probably something like this.

And there's different reconstructions of it. So don't picture like, well, it's not so much like that. Or even, you know, sometimes when I used to read this story as a kid, you know, I had this like image of like Jack and the Beanstalk, right? You build this tower whose top is up into heaven. And then, you know, the people are trying to climb up and show up in heaven. You know, that's not, you know, the word heaven can mean heaven, the throne room of God. It can also just reference the heavens, like the skies, everything that's just from an ancient perspective up there.

So I do think that the best translation is. Well, I think the one I read is good. The new living translation, I think here is good. Come, let us build a great city for ourselves with a tower that reaches into the sky like it's just going to show off our glory. And this will make us famous and keep us from being scattered. There's just nothing good

here, right? We want to make a name for ourselves rather than glorifying God's name. We want to go against God's command of scattering. We want to hunker down and build a monument to show off how amazing we are. But yeah, I'll just, let me go back here. And this is an actual picture here.

This is, it's reconstructed because it's really old. I think this one, this ziggurat, I think is 4,000 years old. Here's another. I'm not sure where this, I think this one is in Iraq, I think. So the ziggurats were a temple-like structure, where at the top you would have sacrifices going on to the deities. But it was also, and I think this picture maybe shows it better, that it was a center

of civilization. Like you have the city, you can't really, well, I think these are, I think these might be the city walls up here. So let's just picture that this is kind of the city. You have farmers that will dwell out here and keeping sheep, raising crops, whatever.

Then you have the commercial stuff going on in the city proper. And then this is kind of the center of commerce, of politics, of religion. It is the center of civilization in the ancient city. And this one in Shinar, which was ancient Babylon, ancient kind of Ur. Like this was, 4,000 years ago,

this was kind of the New York, the Manhattan of the ancient world. So this is not something that's uncovered. It's something that's reconstructed uh they think it looks like true well um this is uh part of this this is the the remains of of what well yeah so some of this is new material being added to it but even the center there i think is the old structure so it's kind of a combination of both. So it's not in the city center now?

No, no. It'd be out in the desert kind of area. I think you can see the city in the back. I'm not even sure which one this is. Oops, sorry. Yeah, I'm not even sure what city. But here's the modern city over here. This might be, I just, I was at a conference a few months ago and a former teacher of mine gave a presentation on

what's the Persian, the ancient Persian city? No? No? Susa. Susa, where the Book of Esther takes place. And Susa was kind of the capital of Persia. And I didn't realize this, but he said because of where it's at today,

I think it's in Iran, few archaeologists have even been there, but he somehow got in and had like a hundred pictures he was showing us of all this stuff. And it was fascinating to see such ancient, ancient ruins that he was saying a lot of these haven't really been looked at by modern archaeologists. In fact, a lot of the stuff in ancient Babylon, you know, it's in Iraq or if you go further east, it's in Iran.

It's hard to get to these countries for obvious reasons. So there's a lot of yet to be discovered things in archaeology. Archaeology is really, it's a lot of yet-to-be-discovered things in archaeology. Archaeology is really, it's a new science. It's like a hundred-year-old science. And it's some, even in the land of Israel, which has been excavated archaeologically pretty extensively. Even then, people predicted about only 4% of what can be discovered has been discovered. My family, we're going to be going to Israel next fall,

but we've been to Israel a few times. And yeah, you'll go to some huge, they call them tells, like an ancient ruin of a city, which is basically a dirt mound that's never been touched. Just because it takes tons of money and tons of time and tons of manpower to carefully sift through, sift through this huge kind of mountain of dirt. And then you have to interpret it and publish it. I mean, archaeology, it's a really, really complex field.

Question? Yes. So you mentioned sacrifices on that. Say it again. Sacrifices. What were they sacrificing? Yes, what were they sacrificing on top of the ziggurat animal sacrifices? Yeah. So obviously, you know, the Israelites from the book of Leviticus and others, you know, that has a whole sacrificial system.

Well, every other religion back then had animal sacrifices as part of their religion. The key difference is they they thought they were literally feeding the gods the gods get hungry they're killing this animal and this animal is like food for the gods um whereas um you know the bible and sometimes the israelites fell into that mindset they thought they were feeding yahweh and this is why you have like in p in Psalm, oh, I forget which Psalm it is, 30, you know, I am God, I'm not hungry, I don't need your sacrifices, you know, God's saying, you've

misunderstood the whole purpose of this thing. But yeah, animal sacrifices were very much a part of every religion back then. Let me go back to this here. So yeah, the Tower of Babel represents, oh here, I didn't put this up yet. It becomes a picture of a successful civilization that is flexing its muscles, but apart from God.

It's doing things that may be good, may be bad, whatever, but it's coming together, building civilization and culture and power, economy, commerce, but not under God's authority. And so this is why you see, well, Babel ends up becoming Babylon. It's the

same place. And this is why Babylon is both an ancient country, but it also becomes almost like a metaphor for any country that is not living under God's authority. This is why Rome, first century Rome, you see in the book of Revelation is referred to as Babylon, you know, the mother of harlots. I found this picture a while back. I thought you got to kind of linger on it a little bit. But I thought it's I like the message here. You can see, obviously, there's many different time periods being conflated together here. time periods being conflated together here.

And it just shows that this attempt to build a great tower to make a name for ourselves has been repeated over and over and over and over all the way to the modern day. Genesis 11 ends with a ray of hope. We have a genealogy. Again, hopefully now, for those who were here last week, you know how important genealogies are. I'm not saying they're exciting to read. I'm not even saying when I'm reading the Bible, I read every single name. read every single name but the but just knowing that that every time you see a genealogy it's God saying I'm going to be faithful to my word I promise to redeem humanity through a genealogical

line and I'm going to keep reminding you that this promise is I will I will not go back on my promise so Genesis 11 verses 10 and following is God is God reminding us that he is faithful to his promise. And at the end of this genealogy, it sort of singles out Abram, who later his name is changed to Abraham, Abraham. and Abraham will end up becoming the new solution to the problem of sin, the extension of God's promise in Genesis 3.15. Is he the seed, the seed of the woman who's going to crush the head of the snake? Well, we're not sure yet, but at the very least, he is the one through whom God is going to carry on his promise. And so going back to our little graph here, we've had Cain,

Cain's line. Then we have Seth, Enoch, Noah. Noah has three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. The genealogy in chapter 11 singles out Shem and then goes from Shem all the way to Abraham. And Shem is where we get the whole term Semite, or if you're anti-Semitic, that means you don't like the descendants of Shem,

namely Abraham and the Jewish people. I mean, being a descendant of Shem is not limited to the Jewish people, but yeah, that's just the term Semite kind of comes from Shem is not limited to the Jewish people, but yeah, the term Semite kind of comes from Shem. So God's promise continues to unfold through Abraham, the next seed in line through the line of Seth. Let's see. Any questions about that?

We can close out Genesis 1 to 11. Remember Genesis 1 to 11, we called it universal history. It's just God dealing with humanity on a really broad universal level. Whereas Genesis 12 to 50, where we're

now turning into the second part of Genesis, it's not divided evenly, otherwise it would be divided at chapter 25, but the two main divisions of Genesis, 1 to 11, and then now 12 through 50, where we have the patriarchal kind of history, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Jacob's 12 sons, and ultimately one of the sons, Joseph, becomes the highlight of the last 13 chapters of Genesis 37-50. But what trips us up is this genealogical line here doesn't end up going through Joseph. It actually goes through Judah, who goes through David, Solomon, all the way to

Jesus. That goes all the way back to Judah. Yes, sir? I've got a question. I just wanted to get your take on it. In chapter 11, in verse 7, God is saying, let us come down there and confuse the language. He also got that same plural pronoun discussion in Genesis 1, 26, when God said, let us make man in our image and according to our likeness yeah who's he talking to there is that the trinity reference I think so I think so um you could have said I right now obviously you know this is in the old testament and in Jews who don't

believe in the trinity also read this passage so it's interesting to see what they say. Typically, a Jewish interpretation would do one of two things. One, they would say, this is more of a plural of majesty. Kind of like, you know, speakers will do this sometimes. We'll refer to ourselves as a we, you know. So they'll say, this is just God referring to himself in the plural as a sign of being majestic. It's not impossible. Or some people say that he's referring to himself and also all the angelic beings. Let us go. Which could work here, but that doesn't work in Genesis 1 because he says let us make man in our image. We're not created in the image of angels.

Angels aren't created in the image of God. Only humans are. So I think Genesis 1, and again, I'm trying hard not to read Christian bias into the text. Like, I don't want to, but man, it does seem to, at the very least, say there's some kind of plurality within

God. He's a singular being, but there's some kind of pluralness. Now. He's a singular being, but there's some kind of pluralness. Now, as the Bible unfolds, we know that Father, Son, Holy Spirit are all referred to as divine. But yeah, I think, so ultimately, yes, I think this is referring to the Trinity.

Yeah, great, great question. I think we could probably stop there. I do have to go soon. We've got a thing to get to here in a few minutes. I would love, just to kind of prep us for next week, Genesis 12, 1 to 3 are three of the most significant verses in the entire Bible. I'm going to just let that linger. It may not seem that exciting,

but as we'll see, you have New Testament references to this passage that calls this passage the gospel. Paul in Galatians 3 talks about the gospel, and he quotes from Genesis 12, verse 3 in particular, and saying this is the gospel, and he spends a whole chapter in Galatians 3 unpacking how Genesis 12, 1-3 has traced, has unfolded throughout biblical history and ultimately was fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

So this next section, I mean, Genesis 12, 1-3, the promise that's unfolding there, and just the whole life of Abraham is foundational for the whole Bible. So if you're looking for a passage to read this week, the Abraham section is 12-25, so about 12 verses. What is that? About 12 chapters, sorry. So what?

Less than two chapters a day. If you read two chapters a day from now until next Sunday, you'd be a better person for it. But yeah, this next section is super, super important. Where is Abram when God spoke this word to him in Genesis 12? Well, I'll just rather than he's in Haran. He came from Ur, Ur of the Chaldees, Ur in Babylon, what will be Babylon. He's traveling up around the fertile crescent, which I'll show a map next week. And that's when God reveals this promise to him. What's fascinating and why I'm such a huge fan of grace is that God initiates this relationship with Abraham. He's preaching the promise to Abraham

when Abraham was a total pagan. I mean, Ur was, he was at that ziggurat probably just a few weeks before worshiping, you know, and yet this God speaks to him and says, I am going to use you. I'm going to make these promises to you. Not because you've been

such a great person. That would be works-based salvation, right? But because I'm such a great God. God initiates out of his free, sovereign grace this relationship with Abraham that becomes foundational for the whole entire storyline of Scripture. Thank you.