Chapter 11
Tower of Babel. Languages originate.
2 And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. [Gen 11:2 ESV]
These would likely have been the descendants of Ham, according to the map above. They were the ones in the east originally.
2021 - This verse:
4 Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth." [Gen 11:4 ESV] "lest we be dispersed" is a direct contradiction of God's command to Noah and his sons after the flood. They also had learned to fire bricks, and use "bitumen" for mortar. If bitumen is truly organically derived, it would not have existed pre-flood. So there may well have been new materials available and human knowledge was expanding exponentially during this time. We should look to the pace of expanding knowledge rather than "inserting" millions of years of minute and incremental increases in knowledge to explain history. I wish I was smart enough to delineate the kinds of things that would distinguish the two. Perhaps there is a "technology" explosion in the same way that geology finds a Cambrian explosion of life.
2023 - So if the above is correct about bitumen, then it also implies that it takes a lot less than millions of years for it to occur. This may be another aspect of having the whole world covered with water. Intense hydrostatic pressures, but I would think the temperatures were normal or just a bit sub-normal at depth. There could have been many feet of sediment atop the drowning vegetation too, burying it quite quickly as the waters rose and the mountains eroded.
Possible FB post
If the whole world shared one language:
6 And the LORD said, "Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. [Gen 11:6 ESV]
The only thing holding men back from the things in the science fiction books are differences in language. This is a permanent hindrance to unbridled progress.
2023 - Will AI remove this hindrance? Oh my...that is an interesting thought. God confused languages to put a stop to this level of cooperation. Did He see this as "all bad", or was it just that in building this tower, these peoples were doing just the opposite of what God had intended for them? The flood was already over...maybe this trend was one of the things that had led to the complete corruption of man, with himself as unlimited and not obligated to worship God, so God pre-empted it this time with language. And just maybe that unrestricted interaction via AI is about to lead once again to the pre-Noahic situation, and a second end to the planet, this time in fire. Hmm...
Possible FB post.
The Trinity in the OT?
7 Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech." 8 So the LORD dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. [Gen 11:7-8 ESV]
Yes. MSB refers all the way back to Gen. 1:26, which reads like this:
26 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." [Gen 1:26 ESV]
2021 - Beginning in verse 10, detailed genealogy of Shem, from whom Abram will come. This genealogy is most important because David and Christ also come from this line. I don't think we get this detail on Ham or Japheth. The genealogy of Shem continues sort of "straight line" to Abram and his brothers. Then the focal point shifts to Terah, Abram's father, and gives much more detail about his three sons and their descendants.
Abram descended from Shem, but Canaan from Ham. Conflict from the beginning. Ham was cursed for seeing the nakedness of his father.
Goes into a lot more detail here about the descendants of Shem than it did in 10:21 and after. This is because from Shem come the people of Israel.
It is interesting to note that Terah took both Abram and Lot and headed for Canaan. But for some reason, on the way, they stopped in Haran and stayed there. Terah dies in Haran...maybe he got sick and that is why they stopped. So it was Terah that sort of got Abram and Lot together. Terah separated his three sons at this point and headed east, leaving Abram's brothers Haran and Nahor in Ur.
2023 - It is possible that Terah founded Haran, rather than just settled there, in memory of how own son Haran, who "died in the presence of his father" in Ur of the Chaldees. Wow! Perhaps a favorite son. Perhaps Terah's continuing grief for his favorite son contributed to Abram's willingness to leave his father and undertake a journey of undetermined destination?
Where there is no prophetic vision the people cast off restraint, but blessed is he who keeps the law.
Proverbs 29:18 ESV
Worded quite differently in this translation.