As I mentioned, this story of Babel can read like a fable or “just-so” folktale to explain where languages and nations come from. But there is far more in this brief story than what the literal reading offers. I’ve said it before: literalism kills. That type of fundamentalist reading will slam the door on modern readers getting anything out of the Bible. Every story, every verse must be read using The Four Senses of Scripture to even get started on unpacking the meaning. These senses are: literal, allegorical, moral, and lastly, anagogical, or how it relates to Christ.

Those who stop on the literal reading think the earth is 6,000 years old. Now, let me pause to say - you can believe the earth is 6,000 years old, because it really doesn’t matter for your daily life. You can also believe the earth is flat and it won’t change much in your real life. The church doesn’t say you cannot believe those things. But if you only use one of these Four Senses to read scripture, you will miss out on a lot. In addition, faith and reason are the two wings that make us fly, as St. JP II said. So it’s best to take in what reason, including science, has learned, so that you don’t flap in circles with only one wing. Those arguing purely for reason vs those arguing purely for faith is the battle of two flocks of birds flying in circles due to their single-wingedness.

You may get what you need with the literal reading, but it’s like looking at a two dimensional picture. If you use all four senses of scripture, it suddenly become three dimensional, more alive and real than anything Meta can fake with a VR headset.

This is why study bibles are important. The footnotes help a great deal in getting the at literal, allegorical, moral, and Christ-facing points. My recommendations are: The Word on Fire Bible, The Didache Bible, The Navarre Bible, The Ignatius Study Bible. For Protestants, there are some terrific study Bibles as well that are faithful and useful (the ESV and the MacArthur). There are others, but if you struggle to read the Bible and want to heave it across the room, you may want to try one of these. Read the notes as you go. There will be difficult passages to your modern ears, but that’s good. That’s where you can put a question mark and come back to it. I have learned more from the Hard Sayings than from the easy parts.

Now, the bad news. Even if you read with the “four senses of scripture” and use a study Bible, you will hit dead ends because of translation issues on specific words. So let’s talk about one of those words: “gentiles.”

A major point of understanding that I whiffed on for years was that “the gentiles” refers to “the nations.” While this may seem insignificant, I believe it makes an enormous difference to our modern ears. The origin of the nations came from this scattering event in the Tower of Babel story, but when Jesus is alive he speaks of “the gentiles” and my mind always just assumed that this meant “The Romans.” When the “gentiles” means all “nations,” like Ethiopia and Egypt and Libya and the Irish and the Chinese, I can start to see how the event at Babel overarches the Bible as whole. This event at Babel speaks to a larger theme than just scattered tongues. Rome is just the dominant nation at the time Christ is born, but there are many other “Romes” along the way that ram into the nation of Israel.

Obviously we have linguistics and anthropology and archaeology to help us understand where languages and nations came from. We know of the Indus River valley and of Mesopotamia and of Mesoamerica. We have lots of scholarship and science to help us with those things, and I’m glad that we do. Thank goodness for the Enlightenment, as they spent two hundred years finding reasons to deny the Bible that are oddly, repeatedly, confirming events of the Bible. Science seems to be working in mysterious ways.

But I do not go to Genesis for science. I don’t know why anyone would. Sure, the Big Bang fits right in there with “let there be light” but to expect Genesis to fit with modern linguistics is ridiculous and it blocks readers from seeing the deeper wisdom of these words. I go to scripture for understanding the soul, and if I really want to know how one language morphed from one place to the next, I’ll enroll in college courses. They key to remember is that the wisdom of Genesis is about the spiritual and physical world, whereas the finite studies of scientific research remain in the physical. Science is stuck in this world by design. Science, when done correctly, does not attempt to build a “Gate to God,” but focuses on observable nature and repeatable experiments. That is its strength and usefulness.

Ok, now back to the words gentiles and nations. What the outcome of Babel is describing is our constant state of tension that we have in the world between nations. Every time the word gentiles or nations is used, it’s referring to this scattering of people. The separation of languages leads to separated groups of people who misunderstand each other. Misunderstanding leads to fear and fear leads to…oh hell - let’s just let Yoda say it:

“Fear is the path to the dark side…fear leads to anger…anger leads to hate…hate leads to suffering.”

You nailed it, Yoda.

That’s what the Bible is telling us here, because the Tower of Babel is the third fall of man. Maybe the fourth. There is a sexual fall of man that clearly happens with the Nephilim story, but I’ll never finish this if I add that one in here as well. So I’m sticking with three falls for now: Adam and Eve fall, Cain falls, and Babel falls.

This third fall is the origin story of the separation of peoples, and the confusion that drives a wedge between people is the inability to understand one another. Pride swells up quickly when misunderstanding gives offense, and between peoples or nations this is the cause of violence and war. We still have the “common language” however. No, the common language did not go away. In the post-Babel world, we still understand competition and greed and envy and anger. We still know that “God helps those who help themselves” whether we say it in Akkadian, Greek, or English. The common language came from our first two falls with Adam and Cain, and if you add in the sexual fall into immorality from chapter 6, you get the full recipe for disaster that leads to the Great Flood. Then the world gets reset. Truly, “The Great Reset” was not Covid, but the Great Flood. The problems, however, being soon after the flood when Noah gets hammered with liquor. I dare to say there is a fall there, as well, but that puts my up to five falls. Perhaps we should call Noah’s fall a stumble.

When we finally get to Babel, the idea presented is that people who work together in a common language can have harmony, or at least it seems that way in the story. But a key problem stands in of the story like an elephant in the room. The common goal of “making a name for ourselves” reeks of the smell that came from the prior falls of Adam and Cain. To “make a name” for oneself is to reject God. To desire one’s name to be spoken in awe is a temptation that hardly differs from the shiny one’s temptation in the garden when it tells Eve that she “will be like gods” if she eats the fruit. Moreover, if everyone intends to make a name for himself, then everyone wants to be a god. This results in too many gods, and ultimately chaos, because gods don’t like to be told what to do. This should sound familiar because that it the state of America today, where we used to say, “For God and Country!” we now focus on the individual, as in, “Don’t tell me what to do!”

The common language of fallen man can build an empire, but it cannot hold the peace, nor can it join us together in endless song, because power attracts others who might also like a taste of it. In fact, the empires that have “made a name for themselves” have done so through violence and coercion, not love. This is why Jesus is so radical, and unlike Babel, his radical self-emptying becomes the very thing that conquers the world. In not trying to make a name for himself, he makes the greatest name in history.

This rejection of God repeats over and over, causing further problems, and as far as Biblical messages go, that is the Old Testament in a nutshell. Adam and Eve’s pride lead them to reject God. Cain was mastered by sin that was “crouching at his door” because he failed to rely on God, and tried to rely on himself. Finally, we get scattered into nations that distrust one another. Our fig leaves just keep getting bigger. We went from using fig foliage at first, to drones and cyberwar in today’s U.S. Army.

Once again, pride brought about the plan to build a Tower to overtake God, and as punishment, just as we were banished from the Garden of Eden, and Cain was kicked out to wander, in Babel we are separated from one another, and therefore pushed further still from God. Another way to think of it is that God retreated from us for our arrogance. We are in this state for a reason, as he waits to return and set things right.

Just like Adam did, nations also have fear. When they build armies and play games of espionage, they are like Adam, saying to God in the garden, “I was afraid, because I was naked, so I hid.” The nations hide behind guns and tanks and jets and missiles, because being open to our neighbors is terrifying. If tomorrow Russia and the United States said, “Let’s just dismantle all the bombs,” and they actually did so, they would then be naked and afraid because they are not the only countries with nukes. The only way the nations stop hiding behind defenses is if all nations decided at once, without pretense or falsehood, to defuse all bombs.

Now, aside from divine intervention, does anyone believe that will happen? The disarmament talks stalled and even if the superpowers said they had defused all bombs, they would surely have their fingers crossed behind their back while announcing it. Is anyone so naive as to believe that either nation would actually get rid of all the missiles?

Throughout history, the nations constantly resort to violence when squabbling over territory and resources. Many modern readers cannot stomach the Old Testament because of the violence. Brutal and ruthless warfare is described in a good chunk of the Old Testament. It confuses modern people that the sacred scripture would contain so much bloodshed, which is odd because we can literally watch it happening on TV today. We can watch World War II or Gulf War or Iraq War footage. We can see newscasts from Ethiopia or Sudan or Syria. It has not gone away, it’s just gotten more impersonal. I used to say that gunpowder killed the classics because in a swordfight you could have some dialogue and drama. No one ever has a good conversation in a gunfight.

In the Old Testament, there are even places where the Most High God, the living God, is instructing his chosen people to commit atrocities. In light of this, it seems the single nation before the Tower of Babel would have been better, right? Scattering the people into nations seems to have led to a lot of awful, disgusting butchery that could have been avoided. This is a huge stumbling block for readers today who look at the bloodshed and ask, “How could a living, loving God allow it?”

Keep in mind that the story of the Tower of Babel and all that follows in the Old Testament is telling us about the world as it is, not as we would like it to be.

The origin of “the nations” is probably less important than realizing that the state of the world that Abraham is born into is one that already has “the nations.” A fact is presented to us. The world of Abraham is full of warring nations already, and the first 11 chapters of Genesis are describing how the fallen world came to be. Imagine a voiceover that splits chapter 11 and 12 saying, “We now join our fallen world already in progress.” Much time has passed since Noah and Babel. We are joining the story in the middle as soon as Abraham is introduced in chapter 12. Living among “the nations,” he is called out to form a new nation.

The LORD said to Abram: Go forth from your land, your relatives, and from your father’s house to a land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you. All the families of the earth will find blessing in you. (Gen 12:1-3)

To understand what is happening here, we have to remember that this declaration is the first thing we hear about Abraham (who is still named Abram at this point). We have just left the “scattering” of peoples into diverse nations, which describes how the world became a bunch of warring tribes and states, and the very next thing is God telling Abraham that he will form a new nation, one that will eventually bring all families under God’s blessing once again.

Every bit of the Old Testament that follows is the process of forming that nation, all driving us toward Mary, where she can give birth to Jesus. The walls between the nations do not move until Jesus comes, and really not until Pentecost, when the inversion of Babel happens.

However, Jesus doesn’t ride out to the nations and shout down the walls, as it happened in Jericho. In fact, Jesus’ ministry is very much confined within the walls of God’s nation, the nation of Israel.

But in chapter 8 of Matthew, we see something significant happen where he first goes outside the nation, just a little bit. Jesus heals a Roman centurion’s son, who is not a card carrying member of the nation of Israel, but he did help build a synagogue. The elders lobby to Jesus for healing, on behalf of this man. Upon hearing the centurion’s faith, Jesus performs the healing of his son. (Lk 7:1-11)

This is quite radical, as he is now healing outside of the lines of the nation of Israel.

Then in chapter 15 of Matthew, we see Jesus take another step outside the wall of the nation. He heals the daughter of a Canaanite woman because of her faith in him. At first, he tells her, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” This line tells us a great deal about his ministry.

In a kind of test, she passes by persisting in asking for help. She calls to Christ for help and won’t let him go. She is a model of faith, of daily conversion, for after having been called, she will not depart him. In other words, she persists, endures, perseveres, and as we know, Jesus tells us that “by our endurance we will gain our soul.”

This is a great lesson in prayer and perseverance, but for our purposes here, the Canaanite woman’s persistence almost seems to open the door to all nations. At that point, even though Jesus has just said he only came for the children of Israel, he seems to be healing people from all over the place. No, it doesn’t say this explicitly, but right after the Canaanite woman’s daughter is healed, he heals crowds of people, and it doesn’t tell us if these people were all Jews or if it included those from “the nations.” Lastly, to top it off, at the end of chapter 15 in Matthew, he feeds four thousand people with the loaves and fishes miracle, and the only pre-requisite to getting some bread seems to be hunger - no passport or ID needed. But again, here it does not list out the members of the crowd. We get the Table of Nations in Genesis but we don’t get a Table of the Hungry in the loaves and fishes miracle. For these Gospel stories, we don’t get the luxury of a Book of Numbers where long lists of names are presented. In any case, everyone who comes to Jesus is fed, and those who need healing and persist in asking for him, Jew or non-Jew, is healed.

The key is to keep asking.

The origin of nations in the Tower of Babel story is a critical point to understand because references to “the nations” and “gentiles” are everywhere in the New Testament. “Gentiles” has to be one of the most confusing words in the entire Bible to modern ears, just like “kingdom” is to our ears as we abide in modern democracies.

For me, “gentiles” is much easier to read as “the nations” or “foreigners” or “non-Jews.” This helps me understand how radical the healings of Jesus were, because accepting foreigners was not something ancient people did. The family and the culture was your whole identity. Even until recent times, this was the case, and really still is for people who live in the real world and not in online in virtual groups.

Jesus starts chipping away at the walls between “the nations.” By accepting women into his inner circle, he’s chipping away at other walls, too. In our age of diversity celebrations, we have completely forgotten where this notion of acceptance and breaking down boundaries came from. It is from Jesus Christ, a carpenter who is God. Lest we forget: without Christendom, we do not get to our current buzzwords of diversity, equity, and inclusion. (Tip: none of those are new ideas, they are just repackaged parts of Catholic Social Teaching, and CST is far more comprehensive, if anyone ever actually read it. In our Present Privilege and Enlightenment Fragility, we ignore wisdom that was gained long before our era, so we have gurus who “re-discover” it. But there is nothing original in our modern moralists, except for that they drop God out of the equation and pin Original Sin on certain groups and excuse it from others. As Fulton Sheen said, “There are not over a hundred people in the United States who hate the Catholic Church. There are millions, however, who hate what they wrongly believe to be the Catholic Church — which is, of course, quite a different thing…As a matter of fact, if we Catholics believed all of the untruths and lies which were said against the Church, we probably would hate the Church a thousand times more than they do.”)

The origin of nations is important because it explains the state of the world that Abraham and the nation of Israel are formed within. This tension between nations is clearly the cause of massive suffering in the world, just as it is today. There are various important passages about who rules the nation with perhaps the most important one being when Jesus is tempted in the desert.

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