PARALLEL GUIDE 7
The Table of Nations and the Tower of Babel

Summary: This chapter introduces a study of the Tower of Babel story by first discussing its background in ancient Mesopotamian culture. Then the chapter reviews the P and J tables of nations, which account for the descent of the known nations from Noah’s sons. It ends by reviewing how God’s grace suffuses the primeval history in the first eleven chapters of Genesis.

Learning Objectives

• Read Genesis, chapters 10 and 11

• State who the Sumerians were and why they are important in this study

• State which peoples were represented by the sons of Japheth, Ham, and Schem

• Describe the ways the J writer ridicules the tower builders

• State the motives for building the city and the tower

• Describe how city life affected people’s awareness of time

Assignments to Deepen Your Understanding

1. Find a Bible atlas or maps of this epoch and this region and locate the Fertile Crescent. We recommend: James B. Pritchard, ed., The Harper Concise Atlas of the Bible (New York: HarperCollins, 1991).

2. In your notebook add the terms ziggurat, sacred place, grace.

3. State who the Sumerians were in reference to their origins and in reference to what they accomplished in Mesopotamia.

4. State the motives for the building of the city and the tower.

Preparing for Your Seminar

• What do you think about the issue of “national security” in light of the story of the Tower of Babel?

• What do you think about programs of public welfare in light of (a) the story of Cain and Abel and (b) the story of the Tower of Babel?

• What are factors that bring us together or separate us because we fail to understand each other (speak in ways we do not comprehend)?

Chapter 7
THE TABLE OF NATIONS AND THE TOWER OF BABEL

We have referred to the Tigris-Euphrates region in Mesopotamia as the place where city life probably began. Actually, no one knows for certain where the very first city culture occurred—how permanent do the buildings have to be and how many of them are required for one to call a place a “city”? The development was, as all human social developments are, a long one. This area is certainly one of the few which can be called the cradle of civilization. The story of the Tower of Babel refers to city life in Mesopotamia. In this chapter we take a brief detour to look at the Sumerian people who began this culture, and then examine the two closely related accounts of the table of nations and the Tower of Babel.

Once again it is necessary for you to mark separately the P and the J passages, for there are really two tables of nations. Mark the following as being the P passages: 10:1-7, 20, 22-23, 31-32. The rest of chapter 10 is J. Read first the P table of nations in chapter 10, and then the J version. You will notice that the two are not at all alike. Do not worry about the names at first reading, but note how many of them are in any way familiar to you. Notice also the rhythm in P’s style.

The Fertile Crescent stretches from the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Mesopotamia northward to their source in the mountains above Palestine, then down the coastal lands of Palestine where sea breezes bring rain, into the valley of the Nile in Egypt. Before modern irrigation systems in the new nation of Israel brought water to the desert areas, this was the only area in the Near East which had sufficient water to grow crops. Throughout history nomadic groups wandered out of the desert into the fertile areas looking for grass on which to graze their flocks. We noticed in the Cain and Abel story the conflict that resulted from this confrontation.

The Sumerians

The Tigris-Euphrates basin and the valley of the Nile are the two great river areas which provide the setting for the earliest civilizations we can trace. Coastal dwellers in the Fertile Crescent and elsewhere along the Mediterranean also developed cities in very ancient times and through their skills in sailing served to spread civilized cultures throughout the Mediterranean lands.

We have seen that the reference to Cain as a builder of cities is probably a reflection of an ancient memory of the origin of cities in the Mesopotamian area. We have also seen the similarity between the biblical flood stories and the one in the Gilgamesh Epic. Probably both had an earlier Sumerian story as their source. Some knowledge of this Sumerian culture will be valuable to help us understand the story of the Tower of Babel and the story of Abraham. An awareness of the effect of the Fertile Crescent on the development and spread of civilization will also be useful in seeing the scope of the table of nations in chapter 10.



Two things of great importance for human culture happened in lower Mesopotamia in ancient times. Exactly when these things happened is impossible to say, because it took many centuries for them to come to pass, but by 2500 BCE they had certainly occurred.

The first of these is a different awareness of time^*. This may sound quite simple, but for a small group of people who are simply trying to survive, the easiest course is to be satisfied with living one day at a time. For hunters, or even for shepherds, the time is relevant only in the change of seasons which causes the prey to move on to other grounds, or the flocks to seek fodder elsewhere. Each winter is much like any other winter, and there is no particular reason to compare one with another. Life is very much the same, year in and year out. Individual people, of course, are born, grow old, and die, and this is important for them and for their families. Time for the nomadic culture as such remains undifferentiated.

Once a group has settled down in one place, however, things become different. Questions arise which never came up when the group was constantly on the move. Who has a right to use what land? For how long? How are arguments about this to be resolved? By whom, and on the basis of what principles? How can we tell who belongs in this community? (The tribe or clan on the move was defined by marriage and blood relationships, but once a town exists, others may move in.) By what rules shall the community be governed? What is the force of these rules, and who shall enforce them? These are just a few of the many new questions that arise as a result of people settling in one place.

The second important thing that had happened by 2500 BCE was the invention of writing. There is evidence of writing at least as far back as 9000 BCE. Earlier we mentioned the development of an alphabet by the Phoenicians, but this was a fairly late form of writing. Much earlier, ways were developed to preserve human words on stone or clay. With the invention of writing it became possible to provide lasting records of events: business transactions, decisions of rulers, the accounts of wars—all the stuff of which history is made. The oral traditions from the past could also be put down in fixed form, without depending on the memories of the old.

The Sumerians met the problem of time head-on and conquered it with the development of writing. With it, they were able to bring the past into the present and to speak to the future through written records.

Who were these Sumerians?^* Sometime before 2500 BCE the group we now call the Sumerians arrived in lower Mesopotamia as relative latecomers. Skeletal remains and artifacts indicate that this group found a native population which resembled “Mediterranean man.” “Mediterranean man” is identified in part from the shape of the skull—the type is called a “long-head.” They were of medium build and rather slim. This “race” was scattered all the way from the eastern end of the Mediterranean to India. The Sumerians seem to have been short, stocky, and heavy, and are of the group called “round-heads.”



The language records of the Sumerians seem to indicate that they were outsiders who came into a large and fairly uniform culture that swept all the way from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean. Further, their vocabulary suggests that they were a seagoing people: their language has many words about the sea and sailing, and there is a king list in Sumerian which shows that the first, and largely legendary, king earned his greatness at sea. This suggests that they arrived in Mesopotamia by sea. If this is so, they may have come from the south by the Indian Ocean-Persian Gulf route, or from the Caspian Sea in the north and thence overland to the lower river basin. Evidence from archaeological digs seems to show that they were in the south first, and gradually moved northward, although an older theory had them move down from the north. At the present time, we have no way of knowing for certain where they originated.

The Sumerians took over the culture they found in Mesapotamia. With their talent for orderly government they transformed a rural society into an urban one. The older culture had progressed past the roaming and hunting stage to one of seed collecting and planting. A wheat and barley culture had developed, tying the people to the soil. They had begun to move into the age of copper, wrapping it around stone flints to make sickles. They had developed pottery so that grain could be stored in jars. Pottery art had reached a fairly high level as well.

The Sumerians took over this culture and organized it into a city-state culture. The Gilgamesh Epic shows this city life and marks the result of the long process by which the Sumerians rose to supremacy in lower Mesopotamia. It shows the cultural level of the time and, perhaps most importantly, reveals the art of writing which its authors left to the ancient Near East and to us. Contrary to earlier opinions, it now seems that the Sumerian language with its written characters was taken by traders from the lower Mesopotamian valley to Egypt, and that the Egyptian hieroglyphics developed from the Sumerian. Further, although the connection cannot be definitely made, it seems likely that Sumerian writing symbols went from Mesopotamia to the Indus valley and eventually resulted in the writing system used for Sanskrit. This was greatly modified by succeeding civilizations. It moved northward up the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and became the basis for the Phoenician alphabet, which in turn probably became the basis for the Greek and Roman alphabets. This legacy to a whole cluster of languages was never lost, carrying with it the skill of writing as well as the substance of the traditions recorded in the various languages. Although the glory of the Sumerians was over by 2000 BCE, their traditions passed on through the kingdoms and empires which followed them—especially the Babylonian—and into the culture of the Old Testament. We especially see this influence in the first eleven chapters of Genesis.

We have been looking at the civilization which sprang up in Mesopotamia. At the same time, Egypt was developing a series of very high civilizations along the Nile River. For centuries these two centers of civilization, the Mesopotamian and the Egyptian, struggled for control over the Fertile Crescent. Palestine, about midway between these two centers, was alternatively controlled by Egypt and Mesopotamia many times.



Moreover, in the second millennium BCE (2000-1000 BCE) there was a great struggle between Egypt and a people called the Hittites from Asia Minor. Success swung back and forth, with the Hittites claiming Palestine when Egypt was weak, and Egypt reclaiming it upon regaining strength. Eventually the Hittite empire, which was a great one, fell without leaving much explicit evidence of its existence in the Old Testament accounts. From then on, during the first millennium BCE, the struggle was between Egypt and the various empires of the Mesopotamian area, particularly the Babylonian and the Assyrian.

When the Israelites entered Palestine, the Egyptians held control and their influence could be seen in many ways, although their power was weakening. (When looking at the P table of nations, keep in mind the important fact that Canaan was Egyptian.) Besides the two centers of power in the two river basins, there was a third group of peoples usually called the “sea people” in the Bible. They were a part of the population that was moving down the land area of what is now Greece, along the edges of Asia Minor, and trying to get into Egypt. A number of these “sea people” were the Philistines, who may have come from the island of Crete to Palestine.

With this background in mind, let us look at the P table in chapter 10. First, in verses 2 ff., we find the sons of Japheth. Some of these names we can identify by comparing this list with other ancient texts; others remain unknown. One of them, Tarshish, represents a people who lived somewhere along the coast of Spain. From the names we can identify, it is clear that this list includes at least the “sea people”; it may include more, but we are safe in seeing it generally as a list of the peoples who lived along the coasts and the islands of the Mediterranean Sea. Besides such seaside peoples, one of the names, Tiras, may refer to the ancient Etruscans who lived in Italy before the Romans rose to power. Notice in verse 5 the expression, “These are the descendents of Japheth in their lands, each with their own language, by their families, in their nations.” This is a kind of refrain which ends the list of the descendants of each of the three sons of Noah.

Verses 6 and 7 tell of the sons of Ham. They are Cush (which is Ethiopia), Egypt, Put (which is Somaliland or perhaps Libya in Africa), and Canaan. This combination shows that the list of nations is not based on race or even language, but on political alignment. Completely different racial and language groups are put together here. The only thing they have in common is that they were all under the political influence of Egypt.

Some white Christians have argued that Ham, according to Noah’s curse, was to be a slave to his brothers, and since the children of Ham are Africans, this means that blacks are supposed to be slaves. This reasoning denies P’s narrative its purpose: the point is to explain the position of the Canaanites. The list is politically, not racially, inspired.

The sons of Shem are dealt with in verses 22-23 and 31. They are the Mesopotamian peoples, including the Arameans (Aram) from whom Abraham was to come. Israel is not mentioned directly, though Aram is the indirect source of the Israelites.



The Table of Nations (P)

The P table of nations is a remarkable document. It gives a worldview which included all the peoples from the Black Sea to Somaliland and from the Persian Gulf to Spain which was the political picture of about the seventh century BCE. The P writer almost certainly did not make it up.

What is most remarkable about the table, however, is that it does not glorify Israel. Most ancient cultures, when they discuss other nations, make their own nation the center of the world. Creation stories and tables of nations alike usually show that gods have specially created the nation and place in which the storytellers live. Their home is the “navel” of the world, the point where the heaven of the gods and earth meet. Such self-glorification is often seen: the Chinese symbols for China mean literally “the central kingdom”; the Greeks thought all languages other than Greek sounded like “bahbah-bah,” and called all non-Greeks “barbarians”; English-speaking people are often disliked in other countries because some of them assume that everyone must certainly speak English! In this table of nations Israel is not even mentioned, and in the creation stories it is made very clear that it was not Israel that was created, but humankind.

Japheth fathered the European sea-peoples, Ham, the Afro-Egyptian-Canaanite peoples, and Shem, the Mesopotamian peoples. The theological purpose of the P document seems to be that the divine command to be fruitful and cover the earth has been fulfilled: “These are the families of the Noah’s sons, according to their genealogies, in their nations; and from these the nations spread abroad on the earth after the flood” (10:32).

The Table of Nations (J)

J’s table of nations is much older than that of P. It is badly fragmented, and it is almost impossible to match it with the P table. In verse 8 we have the peculiar reference to Nimrod. We cannot tell who he was, but there are many guesses. He is called “the first on earth to be a mighty man,” which some think means he was a great emperor-warrior. As the son of Cush, he would be identified with Egypt, and so may have been one of the great pharaohs. He is also called a mighty hunter “before the Lord,” which simply means “on the earth.” What was probably an old saying is connected with him. In spite of his Egyptian connection, the places given as his kingdom are in Mesopotamia. Some scholars connect his name with that of a Babylonian god, Ninurta, who was a god of hunting. With several legends existing about his name there is ultimately no satisfactory explanation of who Nimrod was.

Many Mesopotamian cities are named. The Philistines are connected with Egypt instead of with the descendants of Japheth, who does not appear at all in this table. Other places in the Old Testament link the Philistines with Caphtor (Crete), while this table has them from the Casluhim, with Caphtor (the Caphtorim) listed next. The peoples who were “sons of Shem” in the P table, or at least lived in the places where P’s Shemites lived, are listed under Nimrod. Shem is also named as the father of all the children of Eber, the elder brother of Japheth! The nations under Shem’s name are all but unknown, but they may have referred to small tribes in Arabia.



The descendants of Canaan are the various tribes which Israel met when trying to conquer the land. In this list they sound like great nations. In reality they were small tribes holding tiny pieces of land in Palestine. In short, this list is very confusing if we try to match it with the large-scale picture which P presents. It shows a much smaller scene—the peoples who lived directly around Israel—and there is no worldview as we find in P.

The Tower of Babel

This is a J story. Read Gen. 11:1-9. (The rest of chapter 11 is a genealogy that introduces the Abraham story, which begins in the next chapter.) What is the connection between the table of nations in chapter 10 and the story of the Tower of Babel in chapter 11? We certainly cannot assume that the two originally went together—the refrain at the end of each section of the P table of nations says that all of these groups of nations had their own languages, but 11:1 says that the whole earth had one language. By now we should not be disturbed by this contradiction, since we know that the editor did not try to avoid such things when putting different sources together.

Still there is at least one thing the two chapters have in common: both deal with a worldwide view. It is “the whole earth” of which chapter 11 speaks. Earlier stories were about individuals or small communities, or—as in the Noah story—they spoke of universal corruption but then dealt only with one human being and a single family. The tables of nations and the Tower of Babel no longer limit our attention to the local and small-scale scene. They direct us to the entire world.

Verse 2 names the land of Shinar as the place where a migrating group settled. Shinar is Babylon, so the story refers to the Mesopotamian culture. Scholars now know that there were many migrations of peoples in the ancient world. Wherever it was that human life and culture had their origins—be it some place in Asia as many older theories suggest, or in Africa as recent evidence seems to imply—the spread of humanity over the earth began in prehistoric times and was most likely caused by hunting bands following animals from place to place. We know the great Ice Age caused migrations on a large scale as whole animal populations tried to escape the ice cap. The American Indians crossed over from Asia when the Bering Sea was at a lower level, so that land was exposed from Siberia to Alaska. We shall see that Abraham was part of a group that migrated from the lower Mesopotamian area northward and then down into Canaan.

Verse 3 offers a very subtle kind of humor.^* For the Israelites, stone was the proper building material for large public buildings. Small houses may have been made of brick, but this was for the poor. (Brick was, however, the regular building material in Mesopotamia, where mud was more plentiful than stone.) But these people make bricks, and they burn them rather than letting them harden in the sun. This is a bit of human ingenuity—making building materials rather than taking them from nature. Similarly, these people use bitumen, or asphalt, to hold the bricks together. It is not obvious at first glance that the thick, black ooze which comes to the ground in some places is good as a building material, and it isn’t particularly permanent. In fact, the basic meaning of the word used for bitumen is the accurately descriptive “slime.” So the J writer is saying that ingenious human beings, making their own building materials, look rather silly, for they build their mightiest buildings out of mud and slime.

Verse 4 has the people decide to build a city and a tower “with its top in the heavens.” This simply means a very high tower; it probably does not mean that they were trying to invade the place where God dwells. The idea of God being in the heavens seems to be a much later idea than we have in these Genesis stories, where “heaven” means the firmament or the sky.

The “tower” refers to a ziggurat, a stepped tower which was featured in Babylonian architecture and was probably intended to represent a mountain. Such structures were common in many ancient cultures; some had a place on the top where sacrifices were made to the gods. Mircea Eliade points out in his book The Sacred and the Profane that in ancient religions there is often a particular piece of land, often a mountain, that is thought of as the center of the universe. This is a sacred place, where the realm in which the gods live and the realm where humans live come together. Myths tell of happenings in the realm of the gods; by the acting out of myths, happenings on earth may be given sacred meaning. Perhaps the ziggurats were stylized reproductions of such sacred places. Or perhaps, as appears to be the case in Guatemala and Mexico where there are plenty of mountains and yet structures very like the ziggurats were built, they were attempts to elevate the sacred activities of the priest-rulers above the people—a holy place to followers of other gods. At the time of Hammurabi, a king of Babylon in the 17th century BCE, there existed a ziggurat almost three hundred feet high, faced with glazed tiles. According to the records of Hammurabi, it was situated on “the breast of the earth,” the place from which all fertility flows. We are not sure exactly how the ziggurats came to be or how they were used, but we know that they were there, and the story of the Tower of Babel refers to one. The purpose of the story is at least in part etiological, referring to a prehistoric memory of a ruined city, with an uncompleted ziggurat on the plains of Mesopotamia.

The story explains the etiology of an ancient city and its ziggurat. It also explains why people speak different languages (11:7). But these are not the main concerns of the J writer. The point of the story is what the people are doing and the results of their deeds. They are building the city in order that they might not be scattered. A city links people and gives them a common life. It gives a kind of security, especially in a land which is largely barren and in a situation in which small groups or individuals may be attacked by bandits or wild beasts. So the city was for security. The tower, on the other hand, was for fame—“Let us make a name for ourselves.”

The form of speech used in verses 3 and 4—“Come, let us . . .”—is the same as that used by God in verse 7—“Come, let us go down. . . .” It is also the same as that used in Gen. 1:26, where God speaks to the heavenly court in deciding to make humankind. At this point we can see J’s skill as a storyteller in his careful repetition of phrases.



In verse 5 we have a bit of sarcastic humor. God has to come down in order to see the city and the tower that they were building. It was to be a great tower with its top in the heavens, the mightiest of human works; yet it is so tiny and insignificant that God cannot quite see it and has to come down close to make it out! God’s concern expressed in verse 6 has to be kept in the context of what the early chapters of Genesis have been saying about human beings. Sin began as arrogant rebellion in the garden. It has become a rushing avalanche by the time of the Flood.

After the Flood, we are told that the human heart is still evil. If such sinful beings ever managed to get together and conspire, there would be no evil they could not do. Thus God confuses their language so that peoples can no longer work together. They scatter over the face of the earth, and the city and its tower are left unfinished (11:7- 8).

Verse 9 traces the name of the city, Babel, to the word balal, “confuse.” Once again the writer is using a “folk etymology” rather than modern linguistics. The similarity in sound was enough for J to link these words and to make a theological point. This story presents a view of human political life characteristic of the sweep of Israel’s history. We are able to direct our energies when we work in cooperation. This is one of the main drives toward civilization and a sign of true human greatness. In this story, however, the ability to direct energies is joined to a desire for greatness and to an anxiety—“lest we be scattered.” For the prophets, real security and real greatness do not come from the things that human beings can do for themselves, from mighty empires, political alliances, military power, or any other human strength. Unity and having “a name for ourselves” come only from faithfulness to YHWH.

Genesis 1-11
The Background of Grace

This section of Genesis presents a picture of the common human situation in the whole world under God. There is no attempt at all to speak only of Israel, no attempt to show some position of greatness for Israel, or to claim that God created the whole world just for Israel. It presents God as the Lord of the whole earth and it presents all humankind as God’s creation in God’s own image. “From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth,” Paul says in Acts 17:26.

In ancient times each tribe or nation had its own god or gods; whatever good things might come from the gods would be for that group alone. Religion tended to be exclusive. Israel came to believe that she was chosen by God to be God’s people in a special way, and Christians share that belief for themselves. However much both Israel and the church may have at times forgotten it, their selection by God was for the sake of all the peoples of the world. This “universalism” is clearly shown in the first eleven chapters of Genesis.

Immediately after the statement of the universal lordship of God and the goodness of God’s creation, with humankind at its peak as God’s representative, the contrary motif of sin is introduced. Running throughout all the rest of the Bible, these two motifs play against each other—the goodness of creation and the lordship of God on the one hand, and the arrogance of human sin, which spoils creation, on the other. The stories about human sin are not intended to “explain” how sin came to be, but



rather to describe at every possible level what sin is and what effects—particularly in judgment—it can produce. No one can understand, much less appreciate, the “good news” of God’s acts of salvation until he or she has felt the depth and the power of the contradiction between creation and sin.

A people aware only of the hostility of the world and of the hopelessness of life that can end only in death cannot develop into a people who have dignity and consider the life of every individual as precious. Life becomes brutal, and every human effort is directed to self-preservation. On the other hand, people who have become convinced of their own ability to make a world after their own liking, who regard sin as only a minor shortcoming in an otherwise self-sufficient life, become indifferent to the inhuman acts which they arrogantly carry out. Throughout human history we have seen both attitudes toward life; indeed, we continue to see them at the present time. The Genesis stories avoid extremes, however, to give us a picture of the actual mixed state of human life that is lived at all times and places.

Starting with the story of the fall, human beings seek to become autonomous, misusing their greatness as creatures in God’s image and denying their relationship to God and to the rest of creation. This causes guilt, shame, and fear. These are real forces which operate in our lives and distort them. Genesis describes them as due to our improper self-perception: as creatures of God we have no need to feel guilt, shame, or fear—but in seeing ourselves as something other than God has made us, we become distorted into something we can never be. These three feelings then become inevitable. The result of leaping too high, in the attempt to rival God, is that we fall below our proper status as “very good” and created in the divine image.

In the Cain and Abel story the effects of this behavior spread out and infect human relationships. The attempt to justify oneself—to overcome in oneself guilt, shame, and fear—results in alienation from our neighbor. Insecurity in the inner reaches of a person make it unbearable that others should seem to be whole and secure—justified in their lives. The attempt to seek the kind of basic and fundamental justification which sin requires is a religious act, no matter how it is carried out. To seek self-justification is to seek to make ourselves right in the eyes of all that is—of God and humankind. Whether we attempt this by a cultic act—an act of worship clearly labeled as such—or by seeking power, fame, and glory, our act of self-justification is religious. It is appropriate, therefore, that Genesis 4 shows us Cain first offering sacrifice and finally killing his own brother in an act that compares with Abel’s sacrifice of his own animals. Religious acts are not necessarily good acts; when done for self-justification, they are often done at the expense of others. The result of such self-justification is alienation.

In a community torn apart by each member’s search for self-justification, order and common safety are swept aside. In the story of Lamech the means to maintain order go out of control. Force may be able to maintain order in society, but in Lamech’s society, as in our present-day society, alienation has become so pronounced that the amount of force needed seems to increase at a rate beyond due measure.



The story of the “sons of the gods” and the “daughters of men” speaks of a level of sin that is very difficult to understand. The meaning of the story seems to be that sin has invaded even the lower orders of the divine. This is impossible to describe in everyday terms. There is no clear object or event we can point to and say that it is an instance of a “spiritual” act of sin. Still the overall fact of sin seems to include a special dimension which goes beyond human existence itself. Paul speaks of this when he says, “For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but . . . against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12). There can be a kind of inrushing power—call it madness, possession, or a religious fanaticism—which has all the signs of divine or at least superhuman origin. It can take many forms, and we cannot allow ourselves to assume that Genesis 6 is directly speaking of any of them. Yet this little story reminds us that in some way sin has corrupted “spiritual” as well as material reality. Early Christians were warned to “test the spirits” to see if they were really of God, for nowhere is sin more dangerous nor humankind more open to its power than in our dealings with the divine.

Sin does not affect only the moments when we are specifically doing something evil; Genesis says, in the prologue to the Noah story, that evil moves inward so thoroughly that the human personality is infected. The thoughts of our hearts are evil. Sin resides in us even when it is unspoken and not yet acted upon. So when Jesus speaks of anger and lust as sinful, he is in a long tradition we can trace back as far as Genesis. He reminds us that sin is not limited to murder and fornication. Humankind has come to love evil, and not even a flood can wash away the evil that is inside.

Finally, sin infects the very highest achievements of humankind. Human ingenuity, when combined with human arrogance and with the anxiety which guilt, fear, shame, alienation, “possession,” and the corruption of the heart produce, results in social disruption even when society strives to provide protection and security. Perhaps few ages other than our own have seen so much disruption, and the fear of further disruption is made even more intense as each nation strives for “national security.” Civilization itself, the highest achievement of humankind, can generate a profound fear of destruction.

This picture of sin as growing piece by piece until it includes every possible dimension of life is the background against which the whole drama of the Bible is played. Some have considered the picture too “pessimistic.” Some have called it “life-denying.” If sin were the only thing described in these chapters of Genesis, this might be so—though one would still have to ask if the picture were therefore inaccurate. The lordship of God and his approval of his creation—it is good, it is very good—are also there, not only in chapters 1 and 2, the creation stories, but running throughout, even in the stories about judgments upon sin. Humankind is never cursed; it is never totally destroyed. Life goes on in spite of sin and judgment. Adam and Eve are preserved from an eternity of toil and alienation by being expelled from the region of the tree of life—and God cares for their physical well-being: God makes them clothes. Cain is given a mark for his protection. Even in the Flood, some are saved in the covenant of the rainbow, and God declares that the world shall go on. In the scattering of the nations, as we will see, one shall be found which will provide a blessing to all.



In other words, “grace” is always present, even when, given the offenses of sin, it need not be, for justice does not require it. But more than this can be said. The first eleven chapters of Genesis lead up to the call of Abraham. From Gen. 12 on, the story of the Bible is the story of God’s acts to redeem humankind and the world. It is all a story of grace although grace must occur against the background of sin. No picture of humankind which passes lightly over the fact of sin will be able to deal with the kinds of things which take place in the life of the people of God, or in the life of any of the peoples of the world.