Genesis
11:5 ¶ And the LORD came down to see the
city and the tower, which the children of men builded. 6 And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one,
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. 7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound
their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech. 8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence
upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. 9 Therefore is the name of it called Babel;
because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from
thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.
There
are a number of verses that refer to God coming to earth and to watching what
is happening from a distance.
Genesis
18:21 I will go down now, and see
whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come
unto me; and if not, I will know.
Exodus
19:11 And be ready against the third
day: for the third day the LORD will come down in the sight of all the people
upon mount Sinai.
Psalm
11:4 ¶ The LORD is in his holy temple,
the LORD’S throne is in heaven: his eyes behold, his eyelids try, the children
of men.
Psalm
33:13 The LORD looketh from heaven; he
beholdeth all the sons of men.
Psalm
33:14 From the place of his habitation
he looketh upon all the inhabitants of the earth.
However,
the doctrine of the Lord’s immanence or presence everywhere is also a major
doctrine of the Bible.
Jeremiah
23:23 Am I a God at hand, saith the
LORD, and not a God afar off? 24 Can any
hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him? saith the LORD. Do not
I fill heaven and earth? saith the LORD.
This
doctrine applies even to seeing the inside of a person, his thoughts and
intentions, as the following examples know.
Genesis
6:5 And GOD saw that the wickedness of
man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his
heart was only evil continually.
Proverbs
20:27 The spirit of man is the candle of
the LORD, searching all the inward parts of the belly.
Psalm
94:11 The LORD knoweth the thoughts of
man, that they are vanity.
Psalm
139:23 Search me, O God, and know my
heart: try me, and know my thoughts:
Matthew
9:4 And Jesus knowing their thoughts
said, Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts?
Hebrews
4:12 For the word of God is quick, and
powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing
asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of
the thoughts and intents of the heart.
The
common sense application of verse 5 is for God to turn His attention to this
activity just as earlier in 8:1 to remember Noah did not mean that he had been
forgotten but that God’s attention was now turned to his plight.
Here,
God recognizes that man’s intention is to disobey and stand united against His
will. This is why a one world government run by man will fail because it will
inevitably be founded on opposing God as all of the many facets of current-day
globalism have borne out. The powerful nations wish to impose their corrupt
modern sexual morality, manipulative banking, business, and finance practices,
and a bland, uniform and non-threatening religion around the world focused on
materialism and submission to a world-wide plan of a faceless power behind the
scenes. The control demanded by the Beast and his henchman, the False Prophet,
at the end, as expressed in the Book of Revelation, which is too detailed to go
into here, is in direct opposition to God’s authority over mankind.
A
mirror of this can be found in God’s statements to Samuel about Israel’s desire
for a king like the nations around them in 1Samuel 8.
Here
is the beginning of the languages of the world, usually unintelligible to each
other, but having a common root in man’s unique ability to form sentences,
sentences within sentences, figures of speech, and all of the things that make
man’s ability to communicate with words different from the abilities of the beasts
of the earth, as far as we know now. Not only this but the people have been
scattered across the face of the earth. This may have been done by not only
locating certain families everywhere from the jungles of South America to the
bush country of Southern Africa but also initiating the beginning of the great
migrations from the Near East to the rest of the world, from Siberia to Central
Mexico. As the earth is still in the drying out process after the Flood of Noah
mankind has constantly been on the move, one family conquering and murdering
another family to take their land only to be displaced by another family moving
in. Kingdoms, empires, and even modern-nation states like America and its
globalist evangelists have been trying to recreate this first great effort to
unite all of mankind under one head, under one banner, controlled by one city,
and one method of government, one ideal, and one view of the world with one
tower or religion reaching to heaven. The final consequences will play out in
the book of Revelation.
Babel
is the same word that Babylon is
translated from, that infamous city in the land of Shinar, the fount of all
false religion and rebellion that spread with man across the globe.
Genesis 11:10 ¶
These are the generations of Shem: Shem was an hundred years old, and
begat Arphaxad two years after the flood: 11
And Shem lived after he begat Arphaxad five hundred years, and begat
sons and daughters. 12 And Arphaxad
lived five and thirty years, and begat Salah: 13 And Arphaxad lived after he begat Salah four
hundred and three years, and begat sons and daughters. 14 And Salah lived thirty years, and begat Eber:
15 And Salah lived after he begat Eber
four hundred and three years, and begat sons and daughters. 16 And Eber lived four and thirty years, and
begat Peleg: 17 And Eber lived after he
begat Peleg four hundred and thirty years, and begat sons and daughters.
18 And Peleg lived thirty years, and
begat Reu: 19 And Peleg lived after he
begat Reu two hundred and nine years, and begat sons and daughters. 20 And Reu lived two and thirty years, and begat
Serug: 21 And Reu lived after he begat
Serug two hundred and seven years, and begat sons and daughters. 22 And Serug lived thirty years, and begat
Nahor: 23 And Serug lived after he begat
Nahor two hundred years, and begat sons and daughters. 24 And Nahor lived nine and twenty years, and
begat Terah: 25 And Nahor lived after he
begat Terah an hundred and nineteen years, and begat sons and daughters. 26 And Terah lived seventy years, and begat
Abram, Nahor, and Haran.
From
this passage, if my math isn’t wrong, Shem, the son of Noah, lived to see
Abram’s birth. Genesis 10:25 showed us that it was in Peleg’s time the earth
was divided. Assuming this refers to the scattering at Babylon that took place
between 101 and 310 years after the Flood. Check my math and let me know if you
think I’m wrong. It happened within Peleg’s lifespan. According to 9:28 Noah
himself lived 350 years after the Flood so he would have been alive as well.
Genesis
11:27 ¶ Now these are the generations of
Terah: Terah begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran; and Haran begat Lot. 28 And Haran died before his father Terah in the
land of his nativity, in Ur of the Chaldees. 29
And Abram and Nahor took them wives: the name of Abram’s wife was Sarai;
and the name of Nahor’s wife, Milcah, the daughter of Haran, the father of
Milcah, and the father of Iscah. 30 But
Sarai was barren; she had no child. 31
And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran his son’s son,
and Sarai his daughter in law, his son Abram’s wife; and they went forth with
them from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan; and they came unto
Haran, and dwelt there. 32 And the days
of Terah were two hundred and five years: and Terah died in Haran.
Terah
took his family, Abram and Lot, his grandson, Abram’s nephew, and left Ur, an
ancient city in the general geographical area of Babylon. It was a coastal city
near the mouth of the Euphrates then although it is well inland now due to the
coastline shifting over thousands of years. Ur was a metropolis with its patron
god as Sin, in Akkadian, the moon god. A bull was one of his symbols. Remember
what was said about the alphabet earlier. Some Christian writers have put forth
that Sin, who was known to Ur as the god of wisdom pictured as an old man with
a long, flowing beard, eventually became Allah, the god of the Muslims. Early
archaeologists found in Sin’s temples the crescent moon as a symbol of his
presence. I have done an extensive study, for a non-scholar, on the etymology
of Allah which, while not politically correct, I think should give one pause
about who a great many of the religious adherents of the world actually
worship.
The
entire family is led by their father Terah to Canaan, to Haran, either named
later after Haran, or perhaps Haran was named after the town. The reason for
this journey we will find out next.
Genesis,
chapter 12
Genesis
12:1 ¶ Now the LORD had said unto Abram,
Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house,
unto a land that I will shew thee: 2 And
I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name
great; and thou shalt be a blessing: 3
And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee:
and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.
What
had been brought about in the land of Babel, Babylon, was a religion
counterfeit to the true worship of God. It was not long after men and women
left the ark of Noah. What I said in my comments on 4:16 bears repeating a
little at this point.
From Cain’s time the ancient city had become
religious entity, a type of church, started all at once with invited families
who would share in the same worship and the same gods as can be seen in
Plutarch’s Lives of Illustrious Men,
although the individual family would have its own singular worship and gods
which represented their lars familiaris or familiar spirits (see Leviticus
20:27), the guiding divinities of ancestors dead.[1]
It is likely that Cain’s false religion was carried on through his city and it
is possible and likely that Shem, Ham, and Japheth would be worshipped as
venerable ancestors in different names under the confusion of languages long
after their death.
In addition, each home in the ancient world
was to have a sacred flame which was the religious center of the home and must
not be permitted to go out.[2]
This eternal flame, like the lamp in the tabernacle in Exodus 27:20, must never
go out. This was a counterfeit city in the ancient world, a city of man’s
creation, man’s poor attempt to replace what God intended. Cain’s false religion,
which infected the rest of human history after the Flood, began to be expressed
by his brethren in his city, Enoch, and the eventual religion of the
city-states of Canaan, Greece, and the worship of Rome and India would have
begun there, reinforced by Babylon after the Flood.
The
king of an ancient city was also the high priest, who offered up sacrifices,
and was the highest religious authority. This is evident in a number of ancient
writers such as Aristotle, Euripides, and Demosthenes. Sometimes there were two
kings, a most famous example being Sparta of Greece or the two consuls or Rome
and, we will see later, perhaps in ancient Canaan.[3] This is the world that Abram moved and lived
in, a world awash in everyday religious ritual, a world that had no problem
believing in a distant God the Creator but also a whole pantheon of gods that
were much closer to him and had more of a role in his daily home life. Every
man or group of men desired to have a personal god, it would seem, to make up
for the lost relationship with their Creator, which their ancestors had
willfully eliminated in disobedience. Perhaps also this worship of gods
represented the power the sons of God who had come to earth, mated with women,
and produced giants, the mighty men of renown worshipped in deities whose
presence on earth had been remembered and spoken of by Noah and his three sons
and their wives.
Some
things to note about the ancient world include that from this earliest time
human relationships, such as a family, were a religion symbolized by the meal
they would take together. Also, in their minds all authority must have some
connection with this religion. Law was just another part of religion. In
addition, it should be noted that two cities were religious associations that
did not share the same gods. When war was made it would be made, not only
against the soldiers, men, women, and children of a city but against its crops,
its slaves, its gods.
Here
is the reason for the family leaving Ur. Abram is commanded to do something
very brave, to leave the protective confines of the gods of the hearth, of the
family, where the dead were worshipped, where the eldest son had no choice but
to inherit his father’s property, and his gods, and the father and the son were
joint owners of what the father possessed.
Here,
now, God calls Abram to come away, not only from a city, but from an entire
worldview, to renew the relationship with the one who created him, something
lost to mankind as the darkness spread to every corner where men and women had
been scattered. He is called to obey God, to leave this world while living in
it.
He
promises to make of Abram a great people and that he will be a blessing to the
entire world. Those who curse him God will curse and those that bless him God
will bless. Now begins a process of God turning mankind back to Himself. He
will use Abram as the conduit through which this blessing will pass. Abram’s
journey out of Ur does not end in Haran.
Genesis
12:4 ¶ So Abram departed, as the LORD
had spoken unto him; and Lot went with him: and Abram was seventy and five
years old when he departed out of Haran. 5
And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother’s son, and all their
substance that they had gathered, and the souls that they had gotten in Haran;
and they went forth to go into the land of Canaan; and into the land of Canaan
they came.
Abram
obeyed God and took his nephew with him, the servants and possessions they had
acquired in Haran, and entered the land of Ham’s grandson, Canaan. Haran was a
village which ruins some believe lie in Southern Turkey. The question might be
asked, did Terah found the village and name it after his dead son? Haran is
used as a person’s name later as well. Abram, who will eventually be renamed
Abraham, left the religious associations of his father as commanded.
Joshua
24:2 And Joshua said unto all the
people, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Your fathers dwelt on the other side
of the flood in old time, even Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of
Nachor: and they served other gods. 3
And I took your father Abraham from the other side of the flood, and led
him throughout all the land of Canaan, and multiplied his seed, and gave him
Isaac.
They
traveled northwest from Ur several hundred miles and settled in Haran, from
whence Abram and company would travel southwest to Canaan. Haran, when
translated from the Greek language, rather than the Hebrew here, will be
spelled Charran in Acts 7:2,4. The CH is pronounced as a K when you find it in
the Bible transliterated from one of the original languages. Think of
Nebuchadnezzar or Michael. But when we moderns say Cherubims we use the CHA
sound, not the K sound. Words that are directly from English like checker in 1Kings 7:17, of course, would
be exceptions to this rule.
Abram,
being 75 years old, is not elderly in the way we would think today. Prior to
this time, as you read, many people lived hundreds of years. Their natural
abilities, their appearance, would have remained far more youthful than we
would consider a 75 year old’s body to be today although the upper age limit of
men was rapidly falling in the new environment after the Flood and Abram will
consider himself old and beyond the age of fathering children fairly soon.
Genesis
17:1 And when Abram was ninety years old
and nine, the LORD appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am the Almighty God;
walk before me, and be thou perfect…17
Then Abraham fell upon his face, and laughed, and said in his heart,
Shall a child be born unto him that is an hundred years old? and shall Sarah,
that is ninety years old, bear?
Terah,
Abrahams father, lived to be 205. (Genesis 11:32). When the dispersal at Babel
occurred the lifespan dropped dramatically. See also in chapter 11 Peleg’s
lifespan of 239 years as opposed to his father, Eber, who lived 464 years.
Regarding
the word souls, in the Old Testament,
as the operation of God in separating the soul from the sins of the flesh
referred to in Colossians, chapter 2, has not taken place yet, soul and souls are used to include the physical presence of the person or
beast spoken of as well as the soul, which is tied to the flesh until Christ’s
resurrection and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in those people who believe
and are given faith.
Numbers
31:28 And levy a tribute unto the LORD
of the men of war which went out to battle: one soul of five hundred, both of
the persons, and of the beeves, and of the asses, and of the sheep:
For
those who do not believe that some beasts have souls and spirit also note;
Job
12:10 In whose hand is the soul of every
living thing, and the breath of all mankind.
Ecclesiastes
3:21 Who knoweth the spirit of man that
goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth?
Genesis
12:6 ¶ And Abram passed through the land
unto the place of Sichem, unto the plain of Moreh. And the Canaanite was then
in the land. 7 And the LORD appeared
unto Abram, and said, Unto thy seed will I give this land: and there builded he
an altar unto the LORD, who appeared unto him. 8 And he removed from thence unto a mountain on
the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, having Bethel on the west, and Hai on
the east: and there he builded an altar unto the LORD, and called upon the name
of the LORD. 9 And Abram journeyed,
going on still toward the south.
Sichem
is another spelling for Shechem. Noah built an altar to the Lord and offered
sacrifices upon leaving the ark in 8:20 acknowledging thanksgiving and God’s
mercy. Abram here builds an altar to the Lord confirming his acknowledgment of
God’s promise and direction. In between Noah and Abram there was a great deal
of counterfeiting of the religious impulse placed in man by God that carried on
through the centuries, even today where we don’t necessarily refer to God
directly but call our god by the names of Self, Ambition, Science,
Entertainment, Sports, Country, etc. etc. But, modern man does build altars
quite regularly acknowledging his relationship with his god.
After
Noah, perhaps in remembrance of the sons of God who led the pre-Flood earth in
rebellion and eventually in veneration of elders who died such as Noah, Shem,
Ham, and Japheth, men accepted that there were gods everywhere, little gods,
gods that could easily be made angry because they were so irritable and
malevolent. This belief, “crushed man with the fear of always having the gods
against him, and left him no liberty in his acts.”[4]
For
Abram to turn from this powerful social and religious impulse of man, to leave
his own responsibilities for the family religion, to turn from the gods to THE
God, this return to monotheism, as a scholar might say, was remarkable evidence
of God’s interaction with him in choosing this man out of thousands to reveal
Himself to a fallen world and APPEARING to him in the form of the Lord Jesus
Christ, the visible image of the invisible God (John 1:14; 14:9; 2Corinthians
4:4; Colossians 1:15; Hebrews 1:3).
Not
having God walking physically with them as Adam and Eve enjoyed in the garden
in Enos’ time man called upon the name of the Lord.
Genesis
4:26 And to Seth, to him also there was
born a son; and he called his name Enos: then began men to call upon the name
of the LORD.
And
again, in this age of man, which some call “the church age,” we bring into our
minds the authority of our Creator over us and He establishes a relationship
with us and His Spirit indwells us by our calling upon His name and
acknowledging His sovereignty over us and over all that exists.
Romans
10:13 For whosoever shall call upon the
name of the Lord shall be saved.
But,
God, in the form of His physical presence, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Word by
which all things were created, appeared to Abram. One cannot see the soul of
God, the seat of His will and self-identity, God the Father, so an angel, which
is an appearance of someone or something which is someplace else actually, or a
vision, or the physical presence of the pre-incarnate Christ is what Abram
could see. And the Lord appeared unto
Abram and made this covenant and promise.
Genesis
12:10 ¶ And there was a famine in the
land: and Abram went down into Egypt to sojourn there; for the famine was
grievous in the land. 11 And it came to
pass, when he was come near to enter into Egypt, that he said unto Sarai his
wife, Behold now, I know that thou art a fair woman to look upon: 12 Therefore it shall come to pass, when the
Egyptians shall see thee, that they shall say, This is his wife: and they will
kill me, but they will save thee alive. 13
Say, I pray thee, thou art my sister: that it may be well with me for
thy sake; and my soul shall live because of thee.
Later,
we will get the definition of famine which
is a period of little food and a poor return for farmers. We look at a word in
context and compare its use against like phrases in the verse or passage.
Genesis
41:27 And the seven thin and ill
favoured kine that came up after them are seven years; and the seven empty ears blasted with the east
wind shall be seven years of famine.
Grievous is
shown later to mean that there will be no surplus during a famine. It will then
be a grievous famine.
Genesis
41:31 And the plenty shall not be known
in the land by reason of that famine following; for it shall be very grievous.
Grievous is
an abundance of calamity in the curses on Egypt in Exodus 9 and it is a very
difficult burden to bear in 1Kings 12 and 2Chronicles 10. Grievous causes
grief, obviously, but it is important to see how the Bible defines words in
context and I want to reinforce that for you to help in your own personal
reading.
Abram
does what we would consider a cowardly thing rather than trusting in God to
deliver him. He tells his wife, who is in her 60’s but still at that time still
a fair woman to look upon, to lie and
say she is his sister, not concerning himself in this whether she will suffer
humiliation but in preserving his own life.
Abram,
as Abraham, will do this again in Gerar in chapter 20. His son, Isaac, will
also do this with his wife, Rebekah, in chapter 26 in Gerar, as well.
Apparently, by this, we know that it would not be uncommon for a man to be
murdered so that someone could obtain his attractive wife as a sexual resource.
We
know that fair to look upon means
that a person is sexually desirable. In our modern world women seek to dress
and look like this although if they considered the assortment of characters
they would be attracting, most of which do not look like their favorite movie
or music stars, they might think better of it. Sarai, like other women, had
little choice in the matter and was little better than a commodity or a pack
animal under prevalent laws and customs. It is only in Christ that woman’s
status rises.
Galatians
3:28 There is neither Jew nor Greek,
there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are
all one in Christ Jesus.
Unless,
of course, she is an Independent Fundamental Baptist, in which case she is
typically still in Egypt.
In
this general time, although you cannot seriously accept the dates put forth
without absolute proof of which there is none, Mizraim’s Egypt (see comments on
10:6) was ruled by a Pharaoh, a king, who held absolute power. Later, the Greek
historian Herodotus will tell us that there could be as many as 12 rulers
leading from various places claiming all to be THE Pharaoh. This makes any
attempt to put the Pharaohs and their dynasties in any absolute dating plan difficult.
In addition, the commonly accepted method for dating ancient Egypt is not
without its detractors and is controversial. So, when reading about Old and New
Kingdoms, Intermediate Periods, Dynasty dates, etc. etc. be very skeptical and
cautious about accepted conclusions. Egypt’s ancient history is probably much
more compressed than current scholarship would be willing to let on.
In
any event, depending on the flooding of the Nile River to irrigate crops,
rather than an abundance of rainfall, Egypt was the place to go in most famines
in Canaan. Egypt was also the superpower that would have held the kings of
Canaan as tributaries in those times when other empires were not in control
such as the Hittites, Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persians. Soon, we will see that part of Canaan at this
time was held in tribute by several kings from further east; including Elam and
Babylon.
[1] Numa Denis Fustel De Coulanges, The Ancient City: A Study of the Religion,
Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome (1864, repr. Mineola, NY: Dover
Publications, 2006), 134.
[2]
Ibid., 25.
[3]
Ibid., 173.
[4]
Ibid., 211.
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