Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. -- Genesis 11:7 (KJV)
The builders on the plain of Shinar worked in brick. "They had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter." They burned the clay hard and planned a city with a tower "whose top may reach unto heaven." They said their reason out loud: "let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth."
A Name of Their Own
Genesis 11 does not fault them for hard work or for working together. The trouble sits in what they told one another. They wanted a name, and they wanted to stay in one place to keep it.
"The LORD came down to see the city and the tower." Then He said, "let us go down," and He confounded their language. They left off building the city. From there the LORD scattered them abroad upon the face of all the earth, and the half-built city kept the name Babel.
Many Languages, One Subject
Read Acts 2 beside that chapter. Luke never mentions Babel, but setting the two passages side by side shows a great deal. Once more a crowd stands in one city. Once more a multitude is "confounded," Luke's own word in Acts 2:6. This time the confusion comes because "every man heard them speak in his own language."
The disciples spoke "as the Spirit gave them utterance." God did not gather the crowd by melting them into one speech. Luke still names them Parthians, Medes and Elamites, Cretes and Arabians, and each heard in the tongue he was born to. What changed was the subject. The builders wanted their own name lifted up. The crowd at Pentecost heard "the wonderful works of God."
Most of us build something. A business, a household, a reputation at church, a ministry with our fingerprints on it. Effort is not the problem. The question is what people talk about when they see what we built.
Look at one thing you are working on now. If it stood finished tomorrow, whose works would it tell? Ask the Lord to make it a place where people hear of what He has done.
The bricks at Babel were left where the builders set them down. At Pentecost, people from every land Luke named heard God's works in their own tongues.
