* Exodus xxxiii, 20.
** Exodus xxxiii, 11.
*** John i, 18.
**** Genesis xxxii, 24-31.
v. Timothy vi, 16.
vi. Exodus xxiv, 9-11.
In telling the story of the Tower of Babel, and, describing the state of society immediately after the deluge, the bible paints a pleasing picture of the world after all the bad people in it had been drowned:
And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. *
An ideal state! To educate the races of the world to dwell together as one great family, speaking the same language and cherishing the same hopes—is not that the object of all our efforts? But this was precisely what the God of the bible is represented as not desiring. When Jehovah looked down from heaven and saw the state of harmony in which these people dwelt, and the energy and unanimity with which they labored to erect a tower which in their simplicity they thought would protect future generations from such a deluge as had destroyed their fathers and mothers, he was very much alarmed, and, as the text says, he decided to break up this happy family, and to make strangers and wanderers of its members over the whole earth. Could anything be more inconsistent!
And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.
And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one (that, he did not like), 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 xi, i.
** Genesis xi, 5,6.
This picture of human concord and purpose displeased the being, one of whose supposed titles is "Our Father in Heaven." Nor did he enjoy the sight of a united people, building a city, and a tower to defend themselves against the fury of nature; in other words, progress and science provoked the anger of Jehovah. And so the Lord said:
Let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.
So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. *