Pentecost- Bringing the Nations Home
Our reading from the Old Testament today is the familiar story of the Tower of Babel. There are a couple of Old Testament scholars who have shed new light on this story for me in the last few years. One is Michael Heiser and the other if Fr. Stephen De Young.[1]
De Young sees this story as referring to the Broze Age Collapse that happened in the 12th century BC (just over 3000 years ago). He sees this story not so much as informing people about the Bronze Age Collapse (as it would have been something they were very aware of), rather, the story would be giving the spiritual meaning that lays behind the collapse.
According to De Young, The Tower of Babel story is referring to the first Babylonian Empire, which is not to be confused with the Neo-Babylonian Empire, which was 1000 years later, and who destroyed the Jerusalem Temple and took the people into exile. This empire tied together an incredibly wide geography. Bronze was made from tin and copper. Cyprus was their source of copper and tin was obtained from Afghanistan. Their most famous ruler, Hammurabi, was apparently a fan of sandals from Crete. So, this empire tied together much of the Mediterranean and Middle East, and it’s in this sense that De Young thinks they have a common language. It is a way of talking about the centrality of this empire- how it bound the area together. … De Young also teaches that this empire was bringing back the horrifying ways of the giants, which seems to have been the reason for Noah’s flood (Gen 6:4). In Babylonian religious thought the spiritual beings called ‘Apkallu’ were sages that brought the Babylonian kings lost knowledge from before the flood.
Rather than spreading and filling the earth (as God commanded Adam and Eve), the people gathered together. They constructed an empire. They made a ziggarat, a kind of artificial mountain and temple, designed to be a spiritual technology to gain power. This is the Tower of Babel.
The word ‘Babel’ originally meant “gate of the gods”. The idea of a pagan temple was to create a place where the idol could be housed, which would be a kind of body of that god, so that the god was available to those who had access to the temple. De Young sees the building of the Tower of Babel not as a building that would literally reach heaven, but one that would spiritually be used to try to pull God down to be controlled by the leaders of this civilization. It is an act of rebellion. Rather than obey God, they wanted God to obey them through their spiritual technology represented by this artificial mountain-temple ziggurat.
They desired to draw God down to control Him, and in the story, God does indeed come to visit them. Seeing that they are on the same path that humanity was on before the flood, He scatters them. This is the scattering of the 70 nations, which is a symbolic number of all the nations of humanity. De Young sees this as the Bronze Age Collapse. Without the empire to unify the peoples, they are scattered to live in the wreckage of this empire in a kind of post-apocalyptic world.
De Young and Michael Heiser both point to Deuteronomy 32:8 to add further depth to this event, which reads,
“When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God.”
The Greek version of this text translates ‘sons of God’ as ‘angels’. … The idea is that the 70 nations were given over to these sons of God, this heavenly council, these 70 angels, to govern them. … The sin of human beings became so great that God had to create some kind of distance through these intermediaries. God’s holiness is dangerous to sinful human beings, so distance is needed. God pulls away (in a sense) and puts these angelic beings in place as shepherds to lead the 70 nations back to God.
There is a further tragedy in that, later, something goes wrong, and these angelic beings accept worship from the nations that should be directed to God alone, and this becomes their rebellion against God, becoming fallen angels and the pagan gods of the nations, like Zeus, Thor, Marduk, and Baal. Rather than lead the nations back to God, these ‘shepherds’ instead misled the nations. Instead of drawing them back to God, they led them further away.
The name ‘Babel’, which originally meant ‘gate of the gods’, was then made to mean ‘confusion’ to comment on the consequences of the pride of this fallen empire and the dispersion of the peoples.
Turning now to our reading from Acts, we see an overturning of the Tower of Babel story. … The disciples are in Jerusalem, during the festival of Pentecost. Pentecost was a Jewish festival. It was the second of three harvest festivals. It is also sometimes called the Feast of Weeks because it took place seven weeks (or around 50 days) after the Passover (Pentekostos means ‘fiftieth’). It was also considered to be the anniversary of the giving of the Law and the establishment of the covenant at Mount Sinai, which was believed to have happened 50 days after the Exodus from Egypt. Faithful Jews would gather from all over the known world to celebrate and give offerings at the Temple.
When the Holy Spirit descends on the disciples, miraculously they are able to be understood by people who speak the languages of the 70 nations. The barrier of language is overcome, and people from the 70 nations receive the message about Christ. These people will bring the message of Christ back home with them to the nations. … In Isaiah 66 God says,
There is a further tragedy in that, later, something goes wrong, and these angelic beings accept worship from the nations that should be directed to God alone, and this becomes their rebellion against God, becoming fallen angels and the pagan gods of the nations, like Zeus, Thor, Marduk, and Baal. Rather than lead the nations back to God, these ‘shepherds’ instead misled the nations. Instead of drawing them back to God, they led them further away.
The name ‘Babel’, which originally meant ‘gate of the gods’, was then made to mean ‘confusion’ to comment on the consequences of the pride of this fallen empire and the dispersion of the peoples.
Turning now to our reading from Acts, we see an overturning of the Tower of Babel story. … The disciples are in Jerusalem, during the festival of Pentecost. Pentecost was a Jewish festival. It was the second of three harvest festivals. It is also sometimes called the Feast of Weeks because it took place seven weeks (or around 50 days) after the Passover (Pentekostos means ‘fiftieth’). It was also considered to be the anniversary of the giving of the Law and the establishment of the covenant at Mount Sinai, which was believed to have happened 50 days after the Exodus from Egypt. Faithful Jews would gather from all over the known world to celebrate and give offerings at the Temple.
When the Holy Spirit descends on the disciples, miraculously they are able to be understood by people who speak the languages of the 70 nations. The barrier of language is overcome, and people from the 70 nations receive the message about Christ. These people will bring the message of Christ back home with them to the nations. … In Isaiah 66 God says,
“the time is coming to gather all nations and tongues. And they shall come and see my glory, and I will set a sign among them. And from them I will send survivors to the nations … that have not heard my fame or seen my glory. And they shall declare my glory among the nations” (Is 66:18-19).Through the disciples, by the working of the Holy Spirit, the nations are being brought back to God. … This is the work that was supposed to be done by the angels that were given charge of the nations, but who instead led them astray, and enslaved them under their own power. Psalm 82 is seen by Heiser and De Young as God passing judgement against these beings- It says,
“You are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless, like men you shall die, and fall like any prince” (Ps 82:6-7).
They failed, and the disciples of Jesus are commissioned by God (in wind and flame) to take up the mission to draw back the nations to God, empowered by the Holy Spirit. Through them, Jesus will continue his good work to rescue humanity.
This is a mission that we inherit as followers of Jesus. The disinherited nations are being invited back into relationship with God. Pentecost isn’t just about spectacular miracles of wind, fire, and language. It’s about the reversal of Babel. It’s about the restoration of humanity’s relationship with God. A scattered and divided humanity is being gathered into God’s kingdom. … We are all ambassadors of that Kingdom- tasked with issuing the invitation to those who are still alienated from God. … The barriers that have divided humanity have been overcome by the Holy Spirit, and the work of Christ, and through us the ongoing invitation is being given by God to join His family in His Kingdom. AMEN
This is a mission that we inherit as followers of Jesus. The disinherited nations are being invited back into relationship with God. Pentecost isn’t just about spectacular miracles of wind, fire, and language. It’s about the reversal of Babel. It’s about the restoration of humanity’s relationship with God. A scattered and divided humanity is being gathered into God’s kingdom. … We are all ambassadors of that Kingdom- tasked with issuing the invitation to those who are still alienated from God. … The barriers that have divided humanity have been overcome by the Holy Spirit, and the work of Christ, and through us the ongoing invitation is being given by God to join His family in His Kingdom. AMEN
[1]
https://www.logos.com/grow/really-happened-tower-babel/
See his book “The Unseen Realm” and the written on a
more popular level “Supernatural”.
Fr. Stephen De Young’s work can be found here:
https://www.ancientfaith.com/podcasts/lordofspirits/the_fall_of_man_part_3_the_gate_to_heaven/
https://www.ancientfaith.com/podcasts/wholecounsel/genesis_10_119/
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