On the last episode, there was a flood and some unflattering character analysis. This time, we're going to look deeply into chaos.
Chapter 10 in the book of Genesis is called Table of the Nations. It is a listing with few details about the direct descendants of Noah and their genealogical and social lineages. It talks about which children settled where and what they called these places. A lot of these people get discussed in chapter 11 as well.
There was "Nimrod, a mighty hunter by the grace of the lord" who ruled over a large territory that included Babylon and Shinar. Supposedly, there's a lot more information available about him in texts not included in the bible, but he's relevant here because it is thought that during his reign the tower of Babel was constructed.
What's clear from the text is that Shinar was one of the chief cities of his kingdom and that Shinar is where the tower was built. There was an enticing valley in the land of Shinar that seemed as good a place as any so the people began constructing a "city and a tower with its top in the sky." I'm guessing it was one of those moments where the location determined the architecture and probably the tower really tied the town square together.
The peoples of the world at the time all spoke one language so this would have made the construction of this city and the tower move too quickly? Something had to be peculiar about this city with its tower because it attracted the attention of the lord:
"The lord came down to see the city and the tower that the men had built. Then the lord said 'If now, while they are one people, all speaking the same language, they have started to do this, nothing will later stop them from doing whatever they presume to do. [long pause] Let us then go down and there confuse their language so that no one will understand what another says'."
This is some Loki level chaos energy. The emphasis is obviously mine and the pause was inserted for dramatic effect, but at best this kind of thing would be classified as chaotic neutral. Though it seems more like god woke up one day and decided he wanted to make some mischief so looked around for a suitable group of people to terrorize.
The last chapter went on at length about all the different peoples and places available for enforced humility. Yet this city in Shinar, because of the tower it seems, is singled out to be mind fucked on a level not yet seen in the story so far. Imagine one day you're enjoying the sun and some shit talking with your friends while you're all building a tower that really ties the town square together. Before you can reply to the last quip about how ugly your mother was, suddenly no one can understand anyone anymore. You will have to live forever knowing that you lost an argument about who had the uglier mother because your snappy retort was unintelligible to everyone around.
There's the possibility that this is merely a descriptive tale, one that tries to explain all the different languages and cultures and peoples of the world. What I find interesting about either interpretation for this story is that it paints this creator god as some kind of narcissistic trickster. Either this is a real tale where god's narcissism over some tower caused him to take chaos from 1 to 100 as fast as he could as a punishment for having nice things or the writers want their creator god to seem that narcissistic and petty.
This kind of character seems too capricious to follow seriously at this point, no wonder he's having troubles. The reason is because humans have to follow the cause and effect structure of things. If god comes down and causes chaos for seeming no reason and with no explanation at the time, he seems crazy. You can't trust crazy, you can only appease it for a time.
So about a third of the people from the last chapter get discussed again in the second part of chapter 11. Specifically, these are the children of Shem, one of Noah's kids. Ham was the child from last chapter that found his father in a drunken stupor and had his child cursed for the troubles. Japheth was the third child that along with Shem covered up Noah's "nakedness". Which I still contend is actually "covering up" for his drunkenness and Ham caught all that hell because he got tired of dealing with his drunken dad's bullshit.
Shem's lineage eventually leads to Abraham and we'll get into him in another episode fairly soon. This section also lists ages and first born children, but the interesting thing I noticed is that everyone seems to only be living for half as long as before. The last time there were loads of ages listed, the average person seemed to live to 800 or so years. Now it seems to average less than 400 years before people die. They're still being plentiful and multiplying and living long lives, it's just not as long.
Chapter 11 ends with the discussion of Shem's lineage to Terah. He has three sons: Abram, Nahor, and Haran. In the next chapter Abram will be going on some adventures.
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