Understanding the Tower of Babel: Genesis 9-11 Explained

Hello, and welcome to Through the Bible with Les Feldick. An Oklahoma rancher and farmer, Les Feldick has taught home-style Bible classes for twenty years in Iowa, Oklahoma, and Texas. Les Feldick's unique style of Bible teaching has made the books of the Bible come to life. When Les' teaching is so interesting, people say the time seems to fly by. And now, here's Les Feldick. Good evening, good again to have you all with us, and pick right up where we left off. You're used to hearing that now, aren't you? Go back with me then to Genesis chapter 9. I always like to review for just a moment or so, for the sake of our television people who have been away now for a week, maybe some of you more. But anyway, after the flood now, we see Noah and the three sons and their families are instructed to repopulate the earth, begin to cultivate it. And Noah, as someone just expressed after our last program, they had read or heard that in conference with what I said, that evidently before the flood there was no fermentation, there was no mention of alcohol or drunkenness for sure. And maybe as a result then of the change brought about by the flood or whatever, very possible, I wouldn't argue the point, that maybe Noah didn't realize that what he was drinking would do what it did. But nevertheless, the Scripture makes it clear that the alcohol got the best of him. He became drunk. And then the sad commentary on all that is, and I didn't make mention of it last week, but as you drop down to verse 28, it says that Noah lived after the flood 350 years. Now, isn't it amazing that there's never another mention of the man in Scripture? 350 years, he continues after the ark, and yet not one word. Well, the only thing I can put on it is that the catastrophe that happened to him up there in verse 20 and 21 and 22 destroyed the man's testimony. And you know, we as believers have to be so careful. The devil is constantly out to trip us, and if he can trip us hard enough and we fall far enough, we too can certainly lose our testimony. It doesn't take long. I think everyone, even in the secular world, knows it takes a lifetime to build a reputation. How long does it take to destroy it? Moments. It can happen politically, it can happen in the business world, and it can certainly happen even in Christian circles, where we can build a reputation over years and years, and yet it can be destroyed in almost a moment of time. And I think perhaps that's the reason, then, that Noah lost his influence, because we're going to see in the moments to follow. The human race is going to take another tack straight down, in spite of all the knowledge that Noah and his three sons have concerning the will of God. And I also want to remind you, these were grown people who went into the ark, and they had complete memory of everything that was before the flood. In other words, it would be just as if you and I tonight would all of a sudden find ourselves in the ark, and we'd come out on the other side of the flood. Wouldn't we remember all the technology that we had enjoyed? Wouldn't we remember all the things that were on the earth before the catastrophe? Of course we would. And so, I think these eight people had full recollection, and again, only the brakes of God kept things from moving too fast, and He kept it slowed down so that technology would not erupt again until God was ready for it, which of course we've seen now in the last 80, 90 years, this explosion of technology. Well, you remember then that the three sons of Noah, who came out of the ark with their families, then become the parents of the three great classifications of people that then overspread the earth. You might even break it down this way, that out of the line of Shem came all the mostly great, what we would call religions. I don't like that word, you know I don't. But out of the line of Shem, we've got Mohammedanism, Judaism, and Christianity, and of course when I say the line of Shem, the primary man is going to be Abraham. Out of the line of Ham, then, we have a lot of the original discoveries, a lot of the original inventions came from the Hamitic people, and we're going to see evidence of that as soon as we get into the next chapter. And then out of the line of Japheth, even though, as I said, they were basically uncivilized and barbarian for ever so long, yet once they came out of that, they mushroomed into the people who became so, what shall I say, so expert in the arts and the sciences, music. Out of that you come with the Beethovens and the Tchaikovskys, and you take the inventions of the Industrial Revolution. They all came out of the Caucasian peoples, out of Europe, Great Britain, and then of course as it spilled over into America from the immigrations, and that's not to take anything away from the immigrants who came from the Orient, who have also contributed tremendously to the America as we now know it. But coming back to the overspreading as the Bible lays it out, we laid it on the board for you last week, how that the Japhethites migrated on up into present-day Europe, the sons of Ham ended up primarily in the land of Canaan, and the sons of Shem out there in the Middle East, and I kind of prefer to put the Oriental peoples out of the line of Shem, although I may be wrong in that. But anyway, those three basic groups of people come from these three sons of Noah. Now then, if we'll come on over into chapter 10, and I want to not take every verse word for word. The sons of Japheth are given there in verses 2 and 3, and then when you come down to verse 6, we pick up the sons of Ham. Japheth are listed first there in the first three verses, or four. Then in verse 6 we come to the genealogy of the Hamitic people, and those sons were Cush, Mizrim, and Foot, and Canaan. And then in the other verse I want you to pick up is verse 8, that Cush, one of the sons of Ham, was the father of Nimrod. Now mark that down in your mental bank, because Nimrod is the one we're going to talk about for the next few moments. But to keep on going genealogy-wise through the chapter, you'll get to verse 21, and then you pick up Shem. Now there's the three sons, Japheth in verses 1, 3, 4, and 5, then the sons in the genealogy of the Hamites, and then picking it up in verse 21, the offspring of Shem. And out of the line of Shem we're going to run into, in the last part of chapter 11, the family of Abraham. Terah, the father of Abraham, came out of the line of Shem. Also in those series of verses is a little tidbit that I think is interesting. Others may totally disagree, and we certainly can't prove it. But it's an interesting statement there in verse 25, that unto Eber, who was in the line of Shem, unto Eber were born two sons. The name of one was Peleg, for in his days was the earth divided, and his brother's name was Joktan. Now, what I'm referring to is, I think you've all read or heard or something about the so-called theory of the continental drift. Have you ever heard it? How that the various continents of the world at one time fit together just like a jigsaw puzzle. In fact, all you have to do is look at a map of western Africa and eastern South America, and they just look like they would definitely be pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. And various other continents are situated in such a way that it's very possible. Now, I'm not saying they did, but it's possible that they drifted apart as we now know them, and if they did indeed, it was during the days of Peleg, for it was during that man's lifetime that the earth was divided. That's just like I say, one of the little tidbits. You don't have to hang your hat on it, but it is interesting thinking anyway. All right, now I said we wanted to deal primarily in this half hour with the man Nimrod. Come back if you will then to verse 8, where Cush, a son of Ham, has a son, and he calls him Nimrod. Now, even to this day, we speak of someone who does a lot of hunting as a what? As a Nimrod. But you see, they got it out of context. Nimrod was not a hunter of wild animals. He was not a deer hunter. Nimrod was a hunter of fellow human beings. And we pick that up, of course, in verse 9 and 10. He was a mighty hunter. Now, most of your newer translations, the King James says before, but your newer ones will very often say he was a mighty hunter against the Lord. He was a rebel. He certainly was not a spiritual man, but he was a mighty hunter against the Lord, wherefore it is said, even as Nimrod, the mighty hunter against the Lord. And then verse 10 gives us the clue as to what did he hunt, and the beginning of his what? Kingdom. It's a political thing, and so what is he? He's a despot. He's a totalitarian dictator. And he begins to form this totalitarian empire, if we could call it that. It's probably not a fitting word, but nevertheless he puts together a kingdom, as the Bible calls it, and he brings the people under his control. And then you see the importance of the Hamitic people. As I said, they were the pioneers, because it's out of this line of Ham that verse 10 says the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, or the Tower of Babel in the land of Babylon down there on the Euphrates River. But let's go on. Out verse 11, out of that land went forth Asher, and he built what city? Nineveh. Now, you remember that Nineveh was one of the great cities of the ancients. Who built them? The Hamitic people, out of the same beginners of the city of Babel, and then also some other cities. But now I'm going to leave the scriptural text for just a moment and draw my information from secular writings. It's rather interesting that, again, archaeologists have done us a tremendous favor, and they've dug up a lot, and they found out a lot about this man Nimrod. And Nimrod, as a totalitarian despot-type dictator, had a wife that you could liken to Jezebel. She was totally immoral, she was unscrupulous, and her name was Semiramis. And Semiramis, somehow or other, whether it was by intrigue or whatever, her husband passed off the scene, Nimrod, he dies a premature death from what we can gather, and this Semiramis usurps his throne. And she becomes even worse than he even dreamed of being, and as her Jezebel-type character would bring about, she has a child out of wedlock, and she names him Tamar, T-A-M-A-R. Might want to put that on the board for you. So the son of Semiramis is Tamar. Now she is a totally wicked individual under, no doubt, satanic influence. And if you'll remember, I haven't spent a lot of time teaching on Satan, but I have mentioned more than once that from day one Satan is the master, what do I call him, counterfeiter. See? He's the master counterfeiter, and he is always bringing something up that is so near to the real thing that people can hardly tell the difference. So through this wicked woman, Semiramis, and her offspring Tamar, by satanic influence she dreams up the whole idea of her son being a son of the gods. And so it's a copy, of course, of Christ as the Son of God and Mary the virgin mother, because Semiramis claims that this child did not come from human contact, but that he was a son of God. And so way back in the antiquities you have a counterfeit of the mother and son, or the Madonna and her child, if you want to put it that way. But this Semiramis, then, is the instigator of all of the wickedness that you can associate with the building of the Tower of Babel. Now let's look at the text again, if you will. In chapter 11, beginning with verse 1, the whole earth was of one language, of one speech, all three segments, the Hamites, the Japhethites, and the Shemites now. By the way, from Shemite we get the word that we're very familiar with today, and that is Semite. When you talk of anti-Semitism, it's from this same root word. And they're all one language, and as yet they haven't really divided by their character, or as I said in the last lesson, by their role. They're all one group of people, and they come into the area of Shinar, which is in the Euphrates Valley, and they dwelt there. And they said, verse 3, they said one to another, and again I have to feel that it was at the leading of Semiramis, who in turn was led by satanic influence. And so these people said, go to, verse 3, and let us make brick and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone and slime for mortar. They had all they needed. Verse 4, and they said, go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven. Now let's be logical. These people knew they didn't have Jack's Beanstalk. They knew they couldn't build a literal tower into the very throne room of heaven. So how do you reach heaven? Well, by a worship. And so what they are instituting here is a false, anti-God, ungodly system of worship, whereby Satan no doubt inspired them to think that they could usurp the very heaven of God himself. Now that's nothing new to Satan. He has thought of it before, and he thinks it even yet today, that he is still going to defeat God in his purposes. So they build this tower as not something high that they can actually walk up and enter heaven, but rather as a system of approach to heaven. It's the introduction of false worship. Now as I go through the Scripture, I'll time and again come back and make the statement, remember, that every false religion on this planet tonight, I don't care what it is or where it is, every one of them have their roots back here at the Tower of Babel. This is the beginning of false pagan worship. Now archaeologists have found that in the old ancient Tower of Babel around the top were all twelve signs of the Zodiac. And so I maintain that today the horoscope, the Zodiac, is that of the underworld. It's of the occult, and it should be left alone. Now there again is how Satan has adulterated something which originally was in God's program. And I think that before the flood, that Adam and the early believers understood the Word of God not from the written page, but in the stars. And they had an intrinsic knowledge of the constellations and all these things. It was the Word of God written in the stars. But as the human race degenerated, Satan took that which was spiritually perfect, adulterated it, and turned it to his own purposes so that when we get here to the Tower of Babel, this knowledge of the stars is turned into something that we call now of the spirit world of the occult, and the horoscope and everything that's associated with it is not of God, but it's of the counterfeiter of the adversary. So if you don't remember anything else tonight, I want you to remember that every false religion that has ever been or is now or will come, and they're still going to be coming, have their roots, every one of them have their roots in the Tower of Babel. You just can't escape it. Consequently, now if you'll turn with me all the way back to Revelation, consequently we haven't left Babel behind, not by any stretch of the imagination, because you come back to the book of Revelation, chapter 17, where we're dealing with the false worldwide religion that's going to come on the scene in the final seven years of what we call the Tribulation. In Revelation chapter 17, and you come all the way down, if you will, with me to verse 4, now this of course is in symbolic imagery, but it's certainly a literal truth, where John sees this woman, it's a religious system worldwide, and he sees this woman arrayed in purple and scarlet color and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls. Now all that speaks of what? Tremendous wealth. Now all you have to do is just look at some of the religions in the world today, the cults and the false teachers, some of these people on television. Someone was telling me a while back yet, this one fellow, and I'm not in the business of naming names, but this one fellow draws in a million dollars a day from his television ministry. I mean, it's just mind-boggling. You take some of the great religions of the world, their wealth tonight is unbelievable, and they're all going to come together. They're going to amalgamate all this wealth, and here's what John is seeing pictured then, this woman, this religious system with tremendous wealth, decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of, oh, not religious things, but what? Abominations and the filthiness of her fornication. Now I maintain it's not a physical fornication, but a spiritual, an adulterating of spiritual things which, of course, God hates. Then verse 5, and upon her forehead was a name written, mystery, what's the next word, Babylon. Clear back here in Revelation. We haven't left Babylon behind, not by any means. But here she comes again, and this great world religious system that's coming on the scene and, oh, listen, it's already here. We're seeing it growing by leaps and bounds in what we call the New Age movement, and I warn people constantly, and it's creeping into the churches. It sounds so good. It's Babylon. It's Babel, and here it comes, Babylon the Great, the mother of harlots and the abominations of the earth. All right, now if you'll come back with me, Genesis, then this is where it all began. At the tower of Babel, and as the people were still of one language and one speech, and now as you'll read down through the text, in chapter 11, verse 4, and they said, "...let us build a city and a tower, whose top may reach the heaven, and let us make us a name," now here's as far as we got, "...lest we be," what's the word, scattered. And what had God instructed them earlier? Scatter. Go out and repopulate the whole earth. Now in an attitude of rebellion, what are they saying? I don't care what God says, we're going to stay right here. We've got it pretty good. God's going to have to take things into His own hands, isn't He? So they say, "...lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth." Now verse 5, God intervenes, "...and the LORD came down, and He looked at the city and the tower, which the children of men builded. And the LORD," or Jehovah, "...said, Behold, the people is one." Now remember they've already been segmented genealogically, but they're still basically one people, they're one race, see? And so He said, they have one language, and this they begin to do. Now, look at our explosion of technology right now in the last few years. What has been one of the catalysts, not the only one, but one of them, a breaking down of language barriers? I remember years back when the DNA was first discovered, and I read an article on that, and there was, I think, a German or a French scientist, there was a British scientist, and there were a pair of American scientists who were all getting real close to the discovery of the DNA composition. They had all been comparing notes over the years, until of course they got real close, and they wanted to be the only one to discover it, so then they quit. But basically what enhanced their discovery was this breakdown of the language barrier, and they could converse. This is where they were here. They had one language, and they had already the seeds of technology. Now remember, they aren't that far removed from the flood, it's only about 200 years, and there's a lot of memory of it. But now look what God said, this, verse 6 again, this they begin to do, and now, what's the next word? Nothing. See now I'm a stickler for individual words. Now God says, nothing will be restrained from them. Nothing will be restrained from them which they have, and what's the next word, imagined to do. In other words, as these people looked and saw a bird fly, and they say, hey, we want to be able to fly too. What would they have been able to do? Hey, they would have had flight again before long had God not intervened to slow it down, because it wasn't ready for it. And so God says, we're going to stop it in its tracks. Verse 7, how is He going to do it? He said, let us go down, and there confound or confuse their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. And then verse 8, so the Lord scattered. Now in the Hebrew, the word scattered is a lot stronger. It's a word where He just literally forced them. He didn't just gently scatter them like an old hen might her chicks, but He forced them to go out into the very reaches of civilization, not civilization, but to be civilized, and He scattered them. And they left off to build the city. Verse 9, therefore, the name of it is called Babel, and the definition of the word Babel is confusion, confusion. That's what Babel is. It originated by the confusion of the tongue. But today we speak of the world in all of its business and everything else as Babylon in the book of Revelation. And why? Because the world tonight is nothing but a mass of confusion. It's just unbelievable as you watch the news from day to day, the confusion amongst the nations, the confusion within societies. That's Babel. And even the church, even the church tonight is right back to the place of Babel, isn't it? Just mass confusion. And there's so much disagreement, and yet the Word of God is so plain. Why is it? Because we've come full circle back to the origination of the real confusion. Well, we'll leave it off there, and we'll pick it up next week. Thank you for watching Through the Bible with Les Feldick, a weekly Bible study. 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