Today’s blog post examines two very symbolic objects with one very important lesson. It is time to take your place at the table and the tower.
The table
In a kitchen, there stands a breakfast table in a comfortable house on a bright and peaceful day. A man sits at this table staring out the window into a finely mowed backyard. On the table’s opposite end sits a woman staring into her coffee as she slowly stirs it around and around.
The day may be bright and peaceful, the backyard may be finely trimmed, the coffee may be of pleasant aroma, but the atmosphere is anything but cheery. You see, this man and this woman have not had a heart-to-heart talk in years.
Over the course of their marriage, they learned to exist in cohabitation without effective communication. Many would refer to it as “going through the motions”. It is a marriage without strength and direction. Two lives voluntarily put on autopilot; a relationship hardly worth mentioning. In time, without communication, this marriage will dissolve either through eternal complacency or through separation and divorce.
According to the experts in long-term relationships, the number one destroyer is lack of effective communication. If you don’t believe it, do a quick Internet search and find out for yourself. It is true that money and sex consistently float around in the top 10 list of marriage breakdowns, but even they are supported by the effects of poor communication between the partners. This blog post will explore this issue by looking at the table and tower.
The tower
Effective communication empowers the building of couples, companies, and even countries. Without it we have nothing. Never was this more apparent than in the story of the tower of Babel recorded in Genesis 11. The chapter starts out with a statement on communication:
“And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.” (v. 1)
Yes, there was a time when all of this planet’s human inhabitants spoke a solitary language (“one language”). Not only did they speak this one language, but they communicated with it effectively (“one speech”). This provided for them great cohesiveness and strength as a society.
The trouble
Under normal circumstances, this would have been a good thing. But in this case, it was anything but good, at least from God’s perspective. You see, God had commanded the human family to do something immediately after the great Flood in Noah’s time. God commanded humans to spread out over the earth:
“And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.” (Genesis 9:1)
Regardless of God’s command, man thought he had a better way. Using the power of a unified language, the people made a pact not to spread out and “replenish the earth”. Instead of expanding horizontally across the fruited plains, man decided to stay in one spot and expand upward into heaven by building a city and a tower as their focal point.
The tool
This was not pleasing to God. Not pleasing at all. He had already promised never to destroy the earth again with a universal flood and he stayed to his promise. In this case, He didn’t have to destroy the people, just their community. God’s DIVINE SCHEME for mankind has always been to reunite us to Himself. However, the hearts and intents of this city and its tower only reflected man’s rebellious heart. This sadly would lead to nothing but destruction if it were allowed to continue:
“And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.” (Genesis 11:6)
To break up this community-wide rebellion against the divine, God employed a tool previously discussed. God broke down their effective communications. Long before marriages were divided by language barriers, God used such a method to break down an entire society. He confounded their one language into many.
“Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.” (Genesis 11:7)
The table and the tower
Just as the couple sitting at the breakfast table formed their own little worlds and sat at opposite ends, so did the citizens of the would-be city at Babel:
“So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.” (Genesis 11:8, 9)
So what?
The table and the tower illustrate that effective communication is a powerful thing. With it, we can move mountains, without it, we are reduced to molehills. There was a time when the human race was granted a new beginning with repeated command – replenish the earth.
However, due to disobedience, man lost his ability to effectively communicate and was cursed by God with a splitting of languages. No one language was better than the other, but they certainly did create immediate and immense barriers for unified existence.
If you ever wonder why the human family has so many vastly different types of languages both today and in the past, let your fingers walk the pages of your Bible to Genesis chapter 11. Back to a time when there was only one language, and it was effectively (howbeit rebelliously) used.
Long before linguists and other social scientists discovered the power of language, God had already recognized and used it in dealing with His human creation. It is the effective use of communication through language that builds marriages, machines, and monarchies. Yet, without a doubt, the greatest use of language is when we use it in prayer to intelligently speak with our God and listen for His reply on the pages of our Bibles.
Care to comment on this?
So the next major worldwide alteration after Noah’s Flood was the events at the tower of Babel. Do you agree with the Bible’s account that language creates societies or do you think that isolated societies create their own language?
Sign in and leave a comment at the bottom of this blog post. I would love to know your thoughts!
Until the next post, keep searching the DIVINE SCHEME!
Regards,
Mike MacDonald
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About Mike MacDonald:
As an ordained theologian, Mike has served in many gospel ventures.
He has been a church pastor, chaplain, seminary vice-president,
Christian school principal, and creation evangelist. These roles have
built up an expertise in Mike’s ability to help people discover the true
essence of the Bible and how to make it apply in everyday life.