NOAH & THE TOWER OF BABEL
The sons of God came in to the daughters of men and they bore children to them.
—Genesis 6:4
“So who were the ‘sons of God’ then?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well you just made a clear distinction that when men began to multiply, the ‘sons of God’ saw the ‘daughters of men’ and took wives of their choosing. I want to hear what you think because I’ve got a pretty good idea.”
“Let’s hear your idea first,” said the man.
“Well, God said He didn’t want Adam eating from the tree so man doesn’t become like one of ‘Us.’ Seems like there’s an implication of gods, plural, like in ancient Greek mythology.”
The old man chuckled. “I think that’s a bit of a stretch.”
“Is it though? A lot of cultures back then believed in more than one god. Who’s to say the influence of Egypt didn’t rub off on their neighbors around the time this was written?”
“Well I don’t think—”
“There’s a clear distinction that these were sons of God, so who’s to say there wasn’t some crossbreeding going on, like with Achilles? Your passage just said there were giants on the earth in the days when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men and bore them children. It even called them ‘mighty men’ and ‘men of renown.’ There’s clearly something strange going on, so why couldn’t they be demi-gods, like Hercules?” The boy flexed a skinny pair of arms and the man smiled.
“I don’t believe these are literal giants we’re speaking of here. In fact, when I looked into it, the King James translations were the only versions where the word ‘giants’ appears. All the rest use the term ‘Nephilim,’ which I’ve also seen translated from Hebrew into ‘fallen ones’ or even ‘those causing others to fall.’ Now, to your point of numerous divine beings, I have heard some argue the ‘sons of God’ refer to angels that came down from the heavens to have relations with mortal women, resulting in these supernatural beings, but it seems farfetched that the first mention of God’s holy angels would be spoken of in contempt the way this verse unfolds. Not to mention there’s no reference to angels getting married anywhere else in the Bible that I’m aware of, nor any reference to spiritual beings procreating with mortal beings, so why would this single, cryptic line be the only instance it’s seen? In my eyes these assumptions are as nonsensical as those pagan myths you proposed.”
“Yeah!” said the boy. Then he spat on the ground and said, “Pagans.”
The man watched the boy smirk at him, but he chose not to say anything. “Besides, God goes on to punish men for their actions, not angels, so one would assume the consequence would be brought on by men’s actions, not angels. Which leaves only one perfectly reasonable explanation.”
“Oh?” said the boy. “What’s that?”
“Well our first clue, I think, goes back to Adam and Eve. When she gives birth to Cain, he’s referred to as a man, but when she gives birth to Seth, he’s referred to as a son. My understanding is that ‘sons of God’ refers to Seth’s line, who up until now have been calling on the name of the Lord, and ‘daughters of men’ refers to Cain’s line, who have gone astray from God’s righteous path. So when humans begin to multiply and the sons of Seth see the daughters of Cain were beautiful, their lines begin to mingle with marriage based on promiscuity instead of spiritual character.”
“Ohhh,” said the boy. “Well that certainly brings things down to earth again.”
“While it sounds flashy when celestial beings come down to claim terrestrial wives, especially when they’ve yet to be introduced in the text at all, there’s no moral lesson we can derive from the story that way. I think a more grounded explanation allows us to heed a warning about choosing a spouse who’s aligned with God, or else we become impressionable to ungodly ways. Then we bring Nephilim to earth, meaning children who have fallen off God’s path.”
“But why were they ‘mighty men’ and ‘men of renown’?”
“Many throughout history are known not for their good, but for their sins,” said the man.
“I suppose we could see those ‘giants’ as men who were too big for their britches,” said the boy. “Then the text would read as a cocky narrative. Like, ‘Here, here! We’ve taken the most beautiful women and now we see ourselves as mighty men! You may henceforth refer to us as men of renown!’”
“Perhaps it’s something like that,” said the man, “sure. But I think this is why the Lord says, ‘My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, for he is indeed flesh, yet his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.’ The line appears in the middle of a paragraph describing man’s deviation from His path and the result, so to me it makes sense God would limit his lifespan from many centuries down to one, given the propensity for sin taking place on the earth at the time.”
“Eh. I still kinda like the idea of God drowning a bunch of chumps like Achilles.”
“Whoever the Nephilim were,” said the man, “the Scripture doesn’t say much about them after the flood, so I’m not sure it’s worth our breath to discuss them any further.”
“Alright,” said the boy, offering his palm toward the Bible, “let’s move past it then.”
With a nod the man read on:
When the Lord saw that human wickedness was widespread on the earth, and that every inclination of the human mind was nothing but evil all the time, the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and he was deeply grieved.17
“Well this certainly plays into your theory of God being heartbroken.”
The old man agreed before reading further:
So the Lord said, “I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, creeping thing and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.” But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.18
“So here it says Noah was ‘blameless in his time’ and that he ‘walked with God,’ which I’m assuming means he was the last man on earth to have followed God’s will, and why he’s the chosen one, right?”
“He and his family, yes,” said the man. “God tells Noah that the earth and all its inhabitants are corrupt and full of violence and that He’ll destroy them. Here he instructs Noah to build an ark to His specifications and that He plans to bring floodwaters.”
“I love how the Sunday school version of this story portrays a cute little cartoon chugging along with a bunch of smiling lions and hippos. Besides the fact Noah somehow corralled a bunch of bloodthirsty man-killers, this isn’t a summer vacation cruise. This is God’s wrath being rained down upon the earth destroying everything.”
“But how early should you expose children to that kind of death and destruction?” said the man.
“Says the guy who was slaughtering pigs by eight years old. Yet here you are.”
“I guess that’s true,” said the man.
“God’s feeling particularly talkative today though. Besides cursing everyone in chapter three, He’s barely strung a few words together. All it took was a little intermingling of bloodlines to ruffle His feathers and now He’s just yappin’ away about destruction, telling Noah to wrangle up enough food for two of everything.”
“And Noah was wise to listen,” said the man, “because in a week’s time God says He’ll make it rain for forty days and forty nights.”
“And the poor guy was supposed to be six-hundred years old at this point,” said the boy. “Makes you wonder how his back was holding up after building a giant ark in a week. It’s like, jeez, God, couldn’t the poor guy get a little more time at his age?”
The old man laughed. “I think he built the ark and then God told him to gather the animals a week before the flood, but my back hurts thinking about it either way.”
“Imagine trying to carry a couple rhinos over your shoulder,” said the boy with a wink.
“Trees for the forest,” said the man, and he was about to read on when the boy stopped him.
“Actually, I was doubtful about how realistic the dimensions of the ark would have been for the task, but I found an article where a bunch of physics students found the dimensions the Bible gave for the wood used. They took into consideration the average weight of around seventy-thousand animals and the buoyancy of water, and apparently it adds up.”
“Well there,” said the man, “you see?”
“Doesn’t mean it happened,” said the boy. “It just means the narrators had the foresight to imagine a really big boat.” The old man raised a finger in the air to object, but the boy cut him off. “Look, I don’t want to get into the weeds about the feasibility of how Noah managed to get two kangaroos to swim from Australia to the Middle East and back again after an impossible amount of water recedes to nowhere. We’ll never agree on the story as a factual history the way it’s described, but I do think there is enough evidence for cataclysmic floods that could have inspired this story.”
“Alright,” said the old man, “I’m listening.”
“Well first of all, the story of Noah isn’t exactly an original, you know that, right?”
“What do you mean?” said the man.
“Well, there are flood myths from different cultures all around the world. A number of them even share this narrative where a powerful deity comes down to earth to erase all of life, minus a chosen few in a boat. Now, there seems to be evidence for massive floods in different places on earth, but they happened at different times. And many of the other stories reference great floods, but not all of them mention global floods. My guess is that we see this shared experience because early humans were bound to settle near water for survival reasons, so they lived in prime flooding landscapes, which is common.”
The man stared questioningly but unconvinced.
“The similar stories I mentioned all came from the neighboring regions of India, Greece, and the Middle East, and there’s evidence for a giant flood around there a few thousand years before the Biblical stories were written down. The aftermath of a major event like a super volcano or meteor could have melted a lot of the ice buildup there and caused a huge increase in water levels. It’s possible the rumors got passed down from generation to generation and used as the inspiration for the story we’re reading now.”
The man sat quietly listening with his arms crossed.
“If we’re trying to recount this story as historical,” said the boy, “Noah’s ‘earth’ was only as far as the eye could see when man still traveled on foot. Back when the earth was flat and the center of the universe and all, whoever was around couldn’t just pull out their GPS and livestream the earth turning blue from a satellite. But the earth from their point of view could have been covered in water as far as the eye could see, inspiring a story about an unbelievable event and then justified as an act of God. At least that would make sense to apply a moral lesson for future generations not to make Him angry. But I think we also have to take into consideration the human tendency for embellishing stories told around a campfire.”
“Mhm,” said the man, unwavering in his stance.
“We can also look at the flood from another point of view,” said the boy.
“How so?” said the man.
“Well, someone can imagine a metaphorical flood of chaos on the horizon,” said the boy, “and prepare for it, maybe even prevent it from happening. But if they can’t, at least they can ride it out. Noah could see that things weren’t going well, and maybe God even gave him a heads-up because Noah walked with God in the sense that he’s tuned into some kind of intuition from the great beyond, because he’s not distracted by the human tendency toward evil or whatever. So he had the foresight to see a little further into the future than most people and he prepared for it. And because he prepared, things actually went pretty well for Noah, considering the circumstance, whereas others who were distracted and unprepared suffered and perished.”
“But this was a real event Noah prepared for,” said the man.
“Sure, sure,” said the boy. “I won’t try to convince you, I just thought I’d throw it out there. All I’m saying is that we can look beyond the literal account to take away a warning to apply to modern-day life as well.”
“I see what you’re getting at,” said the man.
“Here’s a question for you,” said the boy. “In order to be a Christian, do you have to accept everything in the Bible as fact? Like say I bought into everything else, but I didn’t think the flood was feasible. Would I still burn in Hell?”
“There’s something called ‘biblical inerrancy,’” said the man, “where the Holy Scripture is the Word of God and therefore carries the full authority of God. This means every statement in the Bible calls for acceptance, every doctrine requires agreement.”
“Jeez, that’s strict,” said the boy. “But who said that, you know? You heard it from some guy who heard it from some guy who heard it from some guy going back a thousand years. This could be a fear-driven command tagged on at any point in a game of telephone by Pastor Joe Schmo in response to a little Johnny who started thinking for himself, probably when people began to read instead of relying on a select few to preach at us.”
“I imagine it came at the beginning,” said the man, “and I never dared question it.”
“That’s my pet peeve about organized religion right there though. We have stories that are ripe for interpretation, but the influencers in power told us if you don’t believe them you’ll burn. Meanwhile we don’t even know who wrote them or what their original meanings were. I imagine there are some people out there that call themselves Christians who have trouble believing everything, you know? I mean how do you get a couple billion people on the same page when it comes to nearly a million words of text?”
“I suppose that’s why there are more than forty-five-thousand Christian denominations across the globe,” said the man.
“Whaaat?” said the boy. “That’s insane! How do you think Jesus would feel about that today?”
With a slight groan, the old man said, “I don’t care to speculate.”
“Where do you draw the line with this stuff though?” said the boy. “What if Bob follows everything the Good Book says but has trouble believing in the flood? Then you have Sally, a flood believer who sins every other day but repents on Sunday. Is Sally allowed into Heaven just because she’s convinced of the flood, but Bob is left out because he had a degree in geology even though he lived a more righteous life?”
“That’s between Bob or Sally and God when they get to the heavenly gates,” said the man.
“Alright, well, we’ll never agree on the flood being true, but let’s see what else we can take away.”
“Fair enough,” said the man, running his finger down the text and paraphrasing. “Let’s see here. Noah and his family were on the ark… It rained for forty days… The earth floods and everything was destroyed… Then the waters prevailed for one hundred and fifty days.”
“And the waters took forever to recede,” said the boy, skimming his own text, “but when they did, Noah built an altar, burnt something that smelled good, and pleased the Lord. So the Lord promised never to curse the ground or flood everything again, which is a sweet relief.”
“Actually,” said the man, “it’s worth noting that this is something God promises ‘in His heart,’ meaning to Himself, not out loud. His first words to Noah and his sons after the flood are, ‘Be fruitful and multiply.’”
“Right. Then He turns to setting a bunch of rules to follow for how the post-flood life should be. Like we’re allowed to eat animals now, right?”
“Yes. It’s also worth noting that our relationship with animals has changed,” said the man. “Where in Eden it was one of dominion, now it’s adversarial, based on fear and dread.”
“Perhaps another reference to how we’ve fallen out of the order that was paradise and now live in something closer to chaos,” said the boy.
“It’s also made clear ‘you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.’ This is the first time blood is mentioned as something to be respected, tied to life, and something we’ll see build upon itself as the books unfold.”
“Right, then He pivots to the new rules laid out for shedding the blood of other humans,” said the boy.
“That’s right. Before the flood, God seemed more forgiving with Cain, letting him live on and have children. But here He requires a reckoning, saying anyone who takes another man’s life shall pay with his own bloodshed.”
“So God puts the responsibility of punishment in man’s hands this time?”
“Something like that,” said the man.
“Then it looks like God signed the contract with a rainbow.”
The old man laughed. “Yes, God tells Noah, ‘The rainbow shall be in the cloud, and I will look on it to remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.’”
“That’s pretty slick.”
“Indeed,” said the man. “Shall we keep going, or do you have another dinner?”
“I’ve got a little while longer,” said the boy, “although I think it’s too late to start a game.”
“That’s alright,” said the man, “I can play Chess anytime. It’s not often enough I get to enjoy these conversations.”
“Very true,” said the boy, peering down at his text again. “Alright, well maybe you can explain this next part to me then, because I never got it. Noah’s sons Shem and Ham and Japheth and their wives come out of the boat and go on to populate the earth. I’ll overlook the jokes about cousin lovin’ and get straight to the confusing part,” said the boy, glancing quickly up at the man with a smirk. The man stared blankly back, so the boy went on. “So Noah plants the first vineyard and gets drunk and then ‘exposed himself within his tent.’ This means he passed out naked right?”
“Mhm,” said the man, “that’s my understanding.”
“Okay, but here’s the confusing part:
Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brothers outside. But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it on both their shoulders and walked backward and covered the nakedness of their father, and their faces were turned away, so that they did not see their father’s nakedness.
When Noah awoke from his wine, he knew what his youngest son had done to him. So he said, “Cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants He shall be to his brothers.”19
The boy looked up at the man and said, “What just happened there?”
“Well,” said the old man, shifting uncomfortably, “there are a few interpretations of those lines. The more innocent one is that Ham walked in on his father passed out drunk and nude. In those times, it was shameful to see someone in that condition. I suppose this is a warning early on in the Bible about the consequence of drinking alcohol, but Ham took it a step further by gossiping about it to his brothers.”
“Oh,” said the boy. “That doesn’t seem like such a big deal to get cursed over though.”
“Maybe not today,” said the old man, “but Shem and Japheth’s actions reveal how seriously their culture took the issue of seeing another naked. They found a way to cover Noah with creativity and care, without looking at him and honoring their father in that way.”
“Gotcha.”
“Also, consider Noah is not only the sole father of the new world in the manner in which you’re thinking now, not to mention the man who just saved humanity through the flood, but he also represents the spirit of the father in some sense. By humiliating his father when he’s most vulnerable for making humanity’s first mistake in getting drunk, Ham loses respect for the spirit of the father. And without the spirit of the father in your life, well, you can become lost. You understand what I mean?”
“I think so,” said the boy. “Like when my parents split up I kinda lost the sense of having a real family dynamic, so I lost the spirit of the family?”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” said the man, “but, yes, I imagine that’s a fair comparison.”
“What are the less innocent interpretations?”
“Well,” said the old man, shifting uncomfortably again, “you see, there are some who believe that ‘seeing their father’s nakedness’ is an idiomatic expression for, well, laying with their father’s, um… wife.”
“He fucked his mom?” said the boy. “Man, I was just kidding about the inbreeding, but that’s another level!”
“Well,” said the man, straightening his posture and putting his hands in his lap, “in this context it wasn’t so much an act of lust as it was one of domination, humiliating or emasculating his father in that way.”
“Wait, but then why does it say Noah ‘knew what his youngest son had done to him’? Doesn’t that mean he—”
“You know,” said the old man, pressing his hands onto the table and propping himself up to leave, “I think that’s enough for today.”
“No, no, wait,” said the boy. “Let’s just skip to the Tower of Babel so we can start on Abram next time. One more chapter and we’ll call it a day.” The man stood frozen, halfway between sitting and standing. “Come on,” said the boy. “One more. We can’t end on that note.”
The man eased back down and said, “Alright. One more. Only because I love how much is packed into so few words here.”
“Thank you,” said the boy.
“But let’s try to keep the language to a minimum,” said the old man. “I’m too old for that shit.”
They both laughed as the boy skimmed through to the Tower of Babel. “Alright, so Noah’s sons multiply and they journey from the east to settle in a land called Shinar. Here, why don’t you read since you love this one.”
“I’d love to,” said the man:
Then they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They had brick for stone, and they had tar for mortar. And they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens. Let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.”20
The man paused and looked up, but the boy said, “Keep going. I like the way what God says parallels what man does.”
So the man read on:
Then the Lord came down to look over the city and the tower that the humans were building. The Lord said, “If they have begun to do this as one people all having the same language, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let’s go down there and confuse their language so that they will not understand one another’s speech.” So from there the Lord scattered them throughout the earth, and they stopped building the city.21
“‘Therefore it is called Babel,’” read the boy, “‘for there the Lord made the language of all the earth babble. And from there the Lord scattered them over all the earth.’ Love that. Man says, ‘Come, let us bake bricks,’ God says, ‘Come, let Us go down.’ Man is concerned with being scattered, God scatters them.”
“Nice parallels indeed,” said the man. “Man has become so ambitious that he thinks he no longer needs God to ascend to Heaven.”
“Oh really?” said the boy. “Is that your take?”
“It says it right there,” said the man, pointing at the verse.
“Well it says ‘top in the heavens,’ but I figured this was an exaggeration for celebrating high towers. You think man was actually trying to break its way back into the garden?”
“Why else would God have to put a stop to the ambition? He sees that man is getting along and working in harmony, which is good, but the project they choose to work on is bad. They want to break the heaven-and-earth divide, perhaps to ascend and communicate with God directly, or even elevate themselves above Him. But the heavens were not meant for man unless God declared it, so man tried to take matters into their own hands.”
“I don’t know where you’re getting that from though,” said the boy. “All it says is man wanted to make a name for himself, nothing about ambitions to communicate with God or escape the earth. As far as we know, everyone who once spoke to God or knew about Eden is dead. For all we know the rumor of Heaven may have been lost years ago. Seems like you’re filling in blanks that aren’t there.”
“I suppose I’m reading between the lines,” said the man. “But man supposes happiness can be found in autonomy, so he builds a city where he can create his own laws instead of follow God’s. In the city, man is powerful, perhaps even evil.”
“Yeah, but point to where God says cities and government are evil,” said the boy. “So Cain succumbed to evil and went on to build a city. That doesn’t make cities evil. What’s that phrase about causation and correlation? If anything, God gives them rules on how to govern themselves, like in the case of murder after the flood.”
“Well how do you interpret the story then?”
“I thought man was trying to build a permanent landmark so they would always know where home base was, so they didn’t get scattered. But this defies God’s command to go forth and multiply and subdue the earth or whatever. That’s what He keeps telling them anyway. But they seem resistant to it. They seem to wanna stay together in one place and accomplish great things in architecture.”
“Hmm,” said the man, stroking his beard. “I guess your interpretation is the one bringing things down to earth this time.”
“I’m not saying you’re wrong,” said the boy, “it just seems like you’re seeing things that aren’t there. I think if God was afraid they’d build some kind of ladder where they could just come and go from Heaven whenever they pleased, He would have told them not to.”
“Ahh, but inevitably there would have been some who defied Him,” said the man, “which would leave God no choice but to use force and aggression to teach a lesson again, something He promised not to do. I think confusing the languages was a benign way of dissuading them from finishing the tower.”
“I have to wonder if there’s a more rational meaning to this story,” said the boy, “tying it back to the event we just witnessed. Civilization was blooming in one area with language and architecture and then all the sudden the flood destroyed most of civilization, and the few survivors scattered in different directions and developed their own cultures and languages that branched off from the original one.”
The man paused before he said, “I don’t think—”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, you think it’s literal history,” said the boy. “I’m just thinking out loud here. Anyway, maybe we sorta figured it out together, or maybe we’re both completely off the mark and have no idea what we’re talking about.”
The man smiled. “Fair enough. What do you say we stop there for today though. This old man’s brain is getting tired.”
“Alright,” said the boy, “sounds good. See you tomorrow?”
“I’ll be here,” said the man, pressing himself to stand again.
The boy did the same, and with a nod, they went their separate ways.