Wisdom-Trek / Creating a Legacy
Welcome to Day 1291 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.
I am Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom
Mastering the Bible - Babel Frames History - Worldview Wednesday


Wisdom - the final frontier to true knowledge. Welcome to Wisdom-Trek where our mission is to create a legacy of wisdom, to seek out discernment and insights, and to boldly grow where few have chosen to grow before.

Hello, my friend, I am Guthrie Chamberlain, your captain on our journey to increase wisdom and create a living legacy. Thank you for joining us today as we explore wisdom on our 2nd millennium of podcasts. This is Day 1291 of our trek, and it is Worldview Wednesday. Creating a Biblical worldview is important to have a proper perspective on today’s current events.

To establish a Biblical Worldview, you must also have a proper understanding of God and His Word. Our focus for the next several months on Worldview Wednesday is Mastering the Bible, through a series of brief insights. These insights are extracted from a book of the same title from one of today’s most prominent Hebrew Scholars, Dr. Micheal S. Heiser. This book is a collection of insights designed to help you understand the Bible better. When we let the Bible be what it is, we can understand it as the original readers did and as its writers intended. Each week we will explore two insights.
Mastering The Bible – Babel Frames History
Insight Twenty-Five: The Rebellion at the Tower of Babel Frames the Rest of Biblical History


Dr. Heiser mentioned the Tower of Babel story (Gen. 11:1-9) in insight 11, which examined how ancient biblical people understood their world. Genesis 11 isn’t the only passage that talks about that event. Deuteronomy 32:8-9, one of the most important passages in the Old Testament for understanding the worldview of the people of the Bible, does as well. The NLT translates it this way:

When the Most High assigned lands to the nations,
when he divided up the human race,
he established the boundaries of the peoples
according to the number in his heavenly court.

For the people of Israel belong to the Lord;
Jacob is his special possession.

When God divided the nations—the punishment at Babel when the languages were confused—he distributed the nations among “his heavenly court.” Some Bible translations have “sons of Israel” instead of “his heavenly court.” The contextual problem with this is that Israel didn't exist at the time of the Tower of Babel. God called Abraham and began the nation of Israel after Babel (Genesis 12). “Sons of Israel” can’t be right. “His heavenly court” or “Sons of God” as in the ESV is also what the Dead Sea Scrolls say, which is the oldest manuscripts of the Bible. The ESV and NLT has the translation correct.

Deuteronomy 4:19-20 is the opposite side of that coin as it refers to the nation of Israel, "And when you look up into the sky and see the sun, moon, and stars—all the forces of heaven—don’t be seduced into worshiping them. The Lord , your God, gave them to all the peoples of the earth. Remember that the Lord rescued you from the iron-smelting furnace of Egypt in order to make you his very own people and his special possession, which is what you are today."



That passage has God allotting these other gods to the nations he dispersed at Babel. These two passages associated with the rebellion at Babel are the Old Testament’s explanation of why the other nations worship other gods: it’s divine punishment from the God of Israel.

So the Tower of Babel event is similar to Romans 1, where Paul tells us that God gave humankind over to its own rebellion. Because the nations would not obey him, God basically gave humanity over to lesser gods.