(Reading: Genesis 11:1-9)

Reading Genesis to this point, one thing should stand out: the unity of the human family. Indeed, humanity is presented as a family that, as sin increasingly pervades the picture, is more and more a broken family. We see already the lack of solidarity when Adam turns on Eve (“the woman whom you put here, she gave me the fruit”) and when Cain asks if he is his brother’s keeper. The first chapters of Genesis convey the notion that sin progressively destroys human unity. In Genesis 11, there is an attempt to explain the human inability to communicate.

The human race is expanding and we come to meet a group that settles in “Shinar” (Babylon). They have big plans. They intend to “make a name for themselves.” They are going to “build a tower that reaches to the heavens.” They use the latest technology to do it: bricks rather than stone, held together by mortar.

God is anthropomorphically represented as visiting the city to see what they’re up to. In response to their unbounded ambitions, he resolves to “confuse their language, so they will not understand each other.”

Is God jealous? No. But this account captures a recurring human problem, one stretching all the way back to Genesis 3: Man wants to be a god. It’s not good enough he is made in God’s “image and likeness.” He wants God’s power (without his wisdom), joined to an unbounded sense of self-defined “autonomy” where his free choice constitutes the good. Man wants to be god but doesn’t want deification on God’s terms.

The inhabitants of Babel want to “reach to the heavens.” A country with skyscrapers might not think that unusual, but the people of Babel are not about the proto-Empire State Building. To “reach the heavens” means they want to get into God’s realm on their terms. What we see in Genesis 11 is what we see in Eden: they will displace God. They’ll reach heaven by themselves. And they’ll bring it down: long before Belinda Carlisle, the people of Babel aspired to “make heaven a place on earth” (or at least reachable from there).

In stopping them, God is not envious of his position. He is not Zeus punishing Prometheus for improving human lives through modern means. God wants man to be creative. Man’s temptation always lies, from Genesis 3 onward, in wanting to cross the line between Creator and creature. In stopping the people of Babel, all God does is prevent them from reaching beyond their capabilities towards even more self-destructive deeds.

The simplicity of the Babel story may blind us to the dangers the people’s attitude poses. They will breach God’s prerogatives on their terms, using their latest technologies. How often do we want to use our technologies to redesign man in our image and likeness, according to the latest eugenic trends? To make babies without mothers and fathers? To produce hybrid beings in the name of our “scientific advancement?” To manipulate other human beings through artificial “enhancements?” How often do we yield to the temptations of the so-called “technological imperative” — i.e., if I can do something, I may.

How often, despite the testimony our experience gives us of the ubiquity of original sin, do we believe we can “immanentize the eschaton,” i.e., bring about the heaven God promises us on the Last Day through our social or welfare programs, even as the Lord assures us, “the poor you will always have with you?” Babel wanted to reach God’s heaven; how often do we want to create a “heaven” without God? Such a state really goes by another name.

The quintessential illustration of today’s biblical text comes from the Dutch Renaissance painter, Pieter Brueghel the Elder (c. 1525-1569). He stands at the beginning of that artistic period that would be called the Dutch Golden Age. His “Tower of Babel” dates from 1563. Its best-known version is in the Vienna Art Museum.

As with most of Brueghel’s paintings, the scenes are densely populated. That might not seem so at first, but part of the reason is the perspective of the painting. To emphasize the enormity of the undertaking in Babel, compare the Tower — which dominates the scene — with the surrounding town. Contrast the masts of the ships with the first ring of the Tower, the size of the houses with the size of the edifice that does penetrate the clouds.

Once you acclimatize your eyes to those perspectives, you can see the tiny people scurrying all along the Tower levels. One commentator claims there are more than 1,000 in the painting.

The painting is vintage Brueghel, situating Biblical events in an adapted form of the Belgian countryside. The design for Babel around the Tower is, according to virtually all commentators, Antwerp. The shape of the Tower is intended to mirror a Babylonian ziggurat, but the influences of Brueghel’s time in Rome are apparent: he adapts many forms of the Colosseum to his Tower.

And while the Biblical account is rather democratic — the people said to each other they should build a Tower — Brueghel situates a king in the left foreground, supervising the project. (Extra-biblical sources generated the broader story that it was King Nimrod who led the Babel project.) As one commentator notes, he looks a lot like the Spanish king who then ruled the Low Countries.

The Tower is incomplete and looks somewhat akimbo. It's clear the project is going nowhere fast — which never stopped builders from spending construction money on the gestures. (For more on the painting, see here.)

One commentator also asked how we blend unity and diversity. The linguistic confusion of Babel also mirrored the ethnic tensions in the Low Countries (especially what we now call Belgium) between the Flemish and French. If diversity subverts their goals, but unity in an illegitimate goal (displacing God) is also subversive, is Brueghel suggesting, the commentator asks, whether unity in Christ is the common bond for the community?