From Paradise to the Promised Land: An Introduction to the Pentateuch

by T. Desmond Alexander

The Babel-Babylon episode highlights two contrasting aspects of human existence: the capacity of people to achieve great things and the hubris of humans who have rejected God’s sovereignty over them.

What a wealth of human meanings converge in the single image of Babel! It is an ambivalent image, evoking powerful feelings of a wide range. On one side we can see the human longings for community, achievement, civilization, culture, technology, safety, security, permanence and fame. But countering these aspirations we sense the moral judgment against idolatry, pride, self-reliance, the urge of material power and the human illusion of infinite achievement.[355]

Constructed by people for people alone, Babel-Babylon is a mockery of what God intended when he created humans and commissioned them to be his temple-city builders. Babel-Babylon typifies every human enterprise that seeks to exalt the creature over the Creator.