The Tower That Wanted to Be Famous

God had told Noah's family, "Fill the earth." Only eight people had come out of the ark. The eight became hundreds, and the hundreds became a great crowd. But the crowd liked staying together.

In those days everyone in the world spoke the same language. They wandered east to a wide, flat plain in the land of Shinar. There were hardly any stones on that plain, only mud, and plenty of it.

"Come on!" they said to one another. "Let's make bricks and bake them hard in the fire!"

They pressed the mud into wooden frames, baked the bricks in hot ovens, and stuck them together with tar.

"Let's build a city," the people said, "with a tower so tall its top reaches heaven! We will make a name for ourselves. Then we won't be scattered all over the earth."

Up went the walls. Up went the tower, brick on brick, higher than anything the plain had ever seen. Builders at the top shouted down, "More bricks!" Builders at the bottom shouted back, "Coming!"

They were making a great name for themselves, and nobody mentioned God's name.

The Bible says the LORD came down to see the city and the tower. (The tallest building in the world, meant to reach heaven, and God still had to come down to get a look at it.)

God said, "Look. They are one people with one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. Come, let us go down and mix up their language, so they will not understand each other."

The next morning a builder on top of the tower leaned over the edge. "More bricks!" he called.

The man at the bottom shouted back something that sounded like a goat sneezing.

"What?" said the builder.

"Hubba gorrum bik?" said the man at the bottom.

Neighbors called across the street and got strange sounds back. Friends tried to explain, then shouted louder, which did not help. At last families who could still understand each other packed up and walked away over rivers and mountains, until people were scattered across the whole earth.

The tower stood on the plain, half finished. The builders had wanted to make a name for themselves, and they got one. The place was called Babel, which sounds like the Hebrew word for "mixed up."

Every family that walked away from Babel took the same wish along: to climb up and be great. Scattering stopped the tower, but it could not change the builders' hearts. For thousands of years people built more towers and carved their kings' names into stone, and the wind and the rain wore the names away. But God had not finished with the scattered families. He meant to bring them back together, and he would not use bricks to do it.

Then God sent someone who went the other way. He came down from heaven, all the way down to a manger, and at last down to a cross. Because he went so low, God lifted him high and gave him the name above every name.

Seven weeks after he rose from the dead, his friends were together in Jerusalem, and the city was full of visitors from every land the families of Babel had wandered off to. God's Holy Spirit came on the friends. They began to speak, and every visitor heard them in his own language. Then Peter stood up and told them all the name: Jesus.