Genesis 11:5-9

Yahweh came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men built. Yahweh said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is what they begin to do. Now nothing will be withheld from them, which they intend to do. Come, let’s go down, and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.” So Yahweh scattered them abroad from there on the surface of all the earth. They stopped building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel, because there Yahweh confused the language of all the earth. From there, Yahweh scattered them abroad on the surface of all the earth.

It is obvious from this passage that the intentions of men are evil. No matter how good people profess to be, God knows that if man is allowed to do what he wants to do, it will be bad. Remember God already destroyed the earth once and He promised not to do it again. Instead of letting the people get together and do evil again, God purposefully intervened.

This time, He confused the languages of the people. This forced them to split up and move out across the earth as He had initially commanded and stopped them from doing what they wanted to do. To this very day, the evil governments of the world are attempting to make names for themselves and defy God’s commandments. It is a very risky thing for a government to do knowing what God did here. There are many ways that God can confuse the intentions of man and as we look at the remains of advanced but godless civilizations in the past, we see that they were eventually brought down to nothing.

Notice that it says here that “Yahweh came down” to the city. This is interesting to me since we know that God can see everything from anywhere. How could a God who is everywhere, “come down?” The answer to this is to accept the fact that God can both be everywhere, and be in a specific place in a special way as well. We know this because we read that at creation, the Holy Spirit hovered over the waters. Even though God was everywhere, He was in a special place in a special way for a certain purpose as well. Another interesting thing to consider is the fact that God can intervene in a major way with creation. In this case, He modified mankind’s ability to communicate using language. God can change the programming of His system when He wants to.

Notice that God referred to Himself as “Us” here. This one of the many references to the fact that God is one God but more than one person. Once again, we don’t really understand this, but we need to accept what the Bible says, even if it is beyond our own understanding.