Genesis 11:1-9
This passage is often read along with Acts 2 at Pentecost, celebrating the coming of the Holy Spirit to the waiting church. The gift of tongues there wasn’t the inspired utterance that we read of elsewhere, but the ability people were given to understand one another even though they were speaking different languages (Acts 2:5-11).
God said, “Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other” (Genesis 11:7). I understand this in the same way I do another, even more difficult passage, Isaiah 6, where we find the Lord telling Isaiah to go and tell the people, “Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving” (Isaiah 6:9). The only sense I have ever made of that is that in order for the people to get the message they will have to experience the full consequences of their disobedience. God, in a sense, abandons them to their own nature, but does not forget them.
Here, humanity uses the gift of language only to build a monument as a physical graph of their own human-based aspirations. The basic sin we have seen all along comes to a climax here: They have stopped listening to God and are only listening to one another, so God confuses their language so they can’t do that. They will have to learn to depend on him again, listen to him again, in order to be able to communicate with one another. The end result will be even better because they will listen to one another from out of cultural diversity. This sets up a beautiful vision of what humanity could be if we would truly place God first.
Prayer:
Lord, will I really be listening to people today? Will I get what’s in someone’s heart, or just hear what I find useful? Let your Spirit come upon me as I encounter people, so their language will be mine, and ours will be yours. Through Christ. Amen.
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1 comment:
re: “Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving”
i admit i'm reading this without any knowledge of the context of the passage within isaiah, so what follows is a first immpression.
i agree that this statement of god's sums up the limits of humanity: you can hear and you can see, but cannot truly understand nor perceive. and from such attempts to do so will inevitably result in some shortcoming, some prideful action, some disobedience.
on the other hand, this statement could be a clue of how to mobe through this world, how to be fully present as we hear and see and experience and be right in the moment , the wonderful moment, with the creator and the creation, and switch off that analytical, dissecting self.
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