The A.B.C. of Scattering:
Part 1: From Adam to Babel

John Plunkett
December 26, 2015

In my last sermon, I talked about the Great Speckled Bird.  

We discussed a little about birds of various kinds, mentioning birds-of-prey such as eagles, vultures and hawks.  But we didn't touch on the sub-topic of migration.

Let's correct that omission today.  Let's talk about migration. 

In this new sermon series, I'd like to examine the migrations of mankind – all of the way from the time of Adam and Eve and their children, through the times of Noah, Abraham, the children of Israel, the early church era, and all the way up to the Church of God in our time.

And along the way I'd like to see if there's anything we can learn from these migrations.  Yes.  Are there any applications of these migrations to the Church of God today?

The title of the series is “The A.B.C of Scattering.”  The "A.B.C." stands for Adam and/or Abraham, Babel, and the Church.

Let's begin at the beginning – at the "re-creation" and let's examine the period from Adam to Noah:

Genesis 1:
27:  So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them.
28:  And God blessed them, and God said unto them, "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth."

This first command that God gave to Adam and Eve was that men and women, starting with those two, were to replenish the earth.  What does replenish mean?  It means to re-fill, to re-stock, or to re-load.  This implies that the earth already had been filled, had been stocked, and had been loaded at some time prior to the time that God said these words to Adam and Eve.

And we know that it had been!  During the long prehistoric time between the first two verses of Genesis, when Heylel (N.B. not Lucifer) was given charge over the earth.  We believe that that was likely the age of the dinosaurs.

But, without taking the time to go into all the detail, suffice it to say that things went badly and there was war in heaven, and the earth became tohu and bohu – it became without form and void (Genesis 1:2). 

So, in order for it to be replenished, it badly needed a "make-over," which God supplied in the re-creation week.  As it says in Psalm 104:30, He "renewed the face of the earth."

But continuing, still in Genesis 1:

29:  And God said, "Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth {N.B.}, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat {food}.
30:  And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creeps upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat {food}: and it was so.

So here we see that God had not only created animals, trees and plants in Eden; but also across "the face of all the earth."

Adam, Eve and their human progeny were given the huge task of properly looking after it all as human caretakers.

Now, in order for Adam and Eve to replenish the earth with a human population who would be able to look after all those treasures, they needed to get started without delay into being fruitful and multiplying.  Here's how:

Genesis 2:24:
Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.

However, Heylel was still around, his name having been changed to Satan.  He came along and so easily diverted their attention from their God-given priority – from cleaving to each other, from being fruitful and multiplying – to messing around with the two trees; thus delaying them (until chapter 4!) from getting down to the job God had given them.

Once they got the hang of it they were on their way!  But that wasn't until after the LORD had expelled them from Eden:

Genesis 3:
23:  Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. 
24:  So He drove out the man; and He placed at the east of the Garden of Eden cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.

This driving out and sending forth of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden was the beginning of their family's migration.

To be able to effectively replenish the whole earth, Adam and Eve and their progeny were not permitted to be absentee landlords!  The LORD expected them to get out there and to rule it all on-site!

Along came Cain and Abel who were begotten and born after Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the garden (Genesis 4:1-2).

Once Cain grew up he was not allowed to be a "Mummy's Boy."  He was not allowed to stay home with his Mum and Dad.  Remember what they were commanded in Genesis 2:  

Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.

That was important back then.  Still is!  After Cain murdered his brother, the LORD sent him on his way too, just like with his parents!

Genesis 4:12:  
When you till the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto you her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shall you be in the earth...

When the LORD kicked Cain out, He told him that he had to be a fugitive and a vagabond.  And Cain seemed, at least initially, to accept that penalty:

14:  "Behold, you have driven me out this day from the face of the earth; and from your face shall I be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth; and it shall come to pass, that everyone that finds me shall slay me."

Although there might have been lots of people who would have liked to have killed Cain, logically, only one of them could be successful!  

Despite the illogic of this last phrase, however, the main thing I am trying to get at here is that the LORD told Cain that he was going to be a fugitive and a vagabond, and Cain initially accepted the fact that he was going to be a fugitive and a vagabond. 

Just like Adam and Eve, as a result of their sin, Cain too was driven out and sent on his way.  

Let’s look at the words fugitive and vagabond. What do they mean?

First, the word fugitive, which is translated from the Hebrew verb (N.B. not a noun) nuwa (Strong's 5128) which has lots of meanings – many of them very relevant to Cain's exile.  Here are a few of them: wander, move, stagger, totter, swing, to be unstable, to be tossed about/around.

Secondly, the word vagabond, which is translated from another Hebrew noun – a similar one to the first: nuwd (Strong's 5110) which also has lots of Cain-relevant meanings including remove, flee, move, waver, wander, move to and fro, and to take flight. Again, all very, very relevant to Cain’s situation of that time.

But the general intent of these two words when applied to Cain is that, due to God's command, he was sent "on the road."  So, still in Genesis 4:

16:  And Cain went out from the presence of the LORD, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden.

We don’t know how far the land of Nod was away from Eden.  We are not sure how far east it was.  But the implication was that just as Adam and Eve evidently had not travelled very far from Eden as they had been commanded, neither had Cain. 

Cain came to a full stop!  The scripture says that he "dwelt in the land of Nod."  We will examine the word "dwelt" shortly.

We can glean from these early chapters of the scriptures that it is apparent that Adam, Eve and Cain did not stay on the road for very long; and because of this, they could not have personally contributed very much to overspreading of the whole earth.

17:  And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived, and bore Enoch: and he {Cain} builded a city, and called the name of the city, after the name of his son, Enoch.

I don’t think that God would have been pleased with him for stopping so soon, apparently quite near to Eden, and I don’t believe that God would have been pleased with him for building a city.  Although he had initially accepted his punishment to be a fugitive and a vagabond, from what we are told in verses 16 and 17, in the long term he refused to accept his God given punishment! 

On the positive side, though, once Cain had done these things, the Bible record tells us that the multiplication of the human population got going in earnest.  Adam and Eve were still having children, Cain had another brother by the name of Seth.  And so, from Adam and Eve and from Seth, Cain and their wives, the multiplication of the human got going in earnest.

These were some of the descendants of Cain:

20:  And Adah bore Jabal: he was the father of such as dwell in tents, and of such as have cattle.

I found it interesting that God would specify in these early lineage verses of His Word this seemingly small point about the descendants of these people being tent-dwellers.  Perhaps He felt that such nomadic people were obeying His commands to spread themselves across the face of the earth better than Adam, Eve and Cain had done – they who had taken it upon themselves to have given up the nomadic life so quickly, and to have settled down into city life. 

Nevertheless, with more children from Adam and Eve and with more children from their children, the population multiplication did continue.  The migrations across the face of the earth also continued:

Genesis 6:1:
And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them...

This brings us up to the time of the Pre-Deluge and Post-Deluge times of Noah.

We all know what happened to cause God to bring the flood upon the earth; so we don't need to rehearse all of that again here.  But there are a few pre-flood verses that are relevant to the expressions of the LORD's desire for Noah's progeny to resume the migrations – both human and animal – across the face of the whole earth after He wiped out most of air-breathing life by means of the flood:

Genesis 7:
2:  Of every clean beast you shall take to you by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female.
3:  Of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female; to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth.

So we clearly see here that the LORD wanted the animals and the humans to repopulate the whole world.

Then, after the flood, when God first brought Noah, his extended family and the animals out of the ark:

Genesis 8:
15:  And God {Elohim} spoke unto Noah, saying,
16:  "Go forth of the ark, you, and your wife, and your sons, and your sons’ wives with you.
17:  Bring forth with you every living thing that is with you, of all flesh, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth; that they may breed abundantly in the earth, and be fruitful, and multiply upon the earth."

So God commanded Noah, his family and all the animals (which He had every ability and power to command) to go forth into the earth and upon the earth.  Today, in modern English parlance, we would probably say "around the world."  As the flood waters receded, God wanted them all to scatter themselves all around the new-born earth – with the accent on the word "scatter."  

This would happen quite naturally if they would only obey these two simple– but important– key instructions from God:

Genesis 1:28:
Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth.

Genesis 2:24:
Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.

These instructions sound very simple.  But, if you think about it, they are being flagrantly disobeyed in modern Israel today. 

Did Noah and his family obey these rules?  Yes they did – at least initially; but maybe not fully, as we see – again in chapter 8:

18a:  And Noah went forth... and his wife...

That was good!  That was obedience to the LORD's commands.  But...

 18b:  ... and his sons... and his sons’ wives with him:

That's not so good!  They didn’t leave their mother and father.  This may have been excusable and understandable for these eight flood survivors to want to remain together initially.  But perhaps not.  God is their Judge.

19:  Every beast, every creeping thing, and every fowl, and whatsoever creeps upon the earth, after their kinds, went forth out of the ark.

We will see that, in the long-term, the animals were more obedient to God’s commands than the human beings were!

In the next chapter, God repeated His command to them all, using somewhat different words:

Genesis 9:
1a: And God {Elohim} blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish...

Replenish what?  Where?  Just the area around Mount Ararat?  Just the area between the Black and Caspian Seas?  Or just the "Fertile Crescent" between the Tigris and the Euphrates? 

No! God told Noah and his family to replenish... 

1b: ... the earth.

By means of this worldwide flood, God had decimated the whole earth of all its air-breathing inhabitants – except for the residents of the ark.  Now He wanted those survivors to replenish the whole earth.  He repeats His command yet again in verse 7:

7:  And you, be you fruitful, and multiply; bring forth abundantly in the earth, and multiply therein….

Please notice all the commands from God to go forth and to bring forth. 

Noah and his family did as they were told and went forth from the ark and, at least, started the journey:

18:  And the sons of Noah, that went forth of the ark, were Shem, and Ham, and Japheth: and Ham is the father of Canaan.

By this juncture in the account, if the time sequence is right, a grandson, Canaan, had been born to Noah's son, Ham. 

19:  These are the three sons of Noah: and of them was the whole earth overspread. 

Eventually anyway!  After some notable deferrals, which we'll come to!

Although we know that Noah had been a good man, maybe all of the work and stress of the building of the ark had tired him out.  Again, I am not his judge.  But rather than leading his sons and daughters-in-law to continue their commanded quest to resume the repopulation and overspreading of the earth, he and his extended family soon came to a full stop! 

Maybe they had moved down some way from Mount Ararat – yes, obviously to a more fertile area with good soil.  But the problem was that they decided to put down roots right there and settle down into the life of "gentleman farmers":  

Genesis 9:
20:  And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard:
21: And he drank of the wine, and was drunk; and he was uncovered within his tent.

At this point in the account, quite a few years had gone by since their arrival at Ararat.  There are a couple of reasons why we know this.  First of all, we know this because it takes time for grapevines to mature to the point of being ready to bear grapes that are fit for wine making.  I looked it up, and one expert stated that it takes up to three years before a vine will bear grapes that are ready for making good wine.  Secondly, it also takes time for good wine to be made and to be matured.

We know that Noah’s wine was not "new wine."  The Bible mentions new wine in many different places.  The Hebrew word for new wine throughout the Old Testament, is tiyrowsh. But the Hebrew word for fully matured wine is yayin.   And this was yayin!  So we believe that it must have taken some time to fully mature.

Also, we see from verses 20 and 21 is that, at this point, Noah, who evidently had no former experience in vineyard husbandry, "began to be a husbandman".  In doing so, it very much appears that he got his priorities mixed up!  Even after some time since their arrival at Ararat, he grew a vineyard even before he built a house!  He was still living in a tent!

And these poor decisions sparked some history-changing problems:

22:  And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren outside.
23:  And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father’s nakedness.
24:  And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him.
25:  And he said, "Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren."
26:  And he said, "Blessed be the LORD God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.
27:  God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant."

There are different opinions as to whether it was Ham or Canaan who did "the bad deed" here.  Was Canaan cursed because of what his father, Ham, had done; or was he cursed because of what he had done himself?

If the former, we might think that that was not fair.  But we can find quite a few scriptures that tell us that, in those days, the LORD frequently visited the iniquity of the fathers on the children unto the third and fourth generation of people who hated Him.  Does that perhaps come into it?  Again, we don’t know all of the fine detail.

Also, we're not told exactly what "the bad deed" was that was done to Noah.  It may have been something "nasty."  Or it may have been something as relatively innocent (in our modern minds, anyway) as playful ridicule of "silly, tipsy old Dad" or "silly, tipsy old granddad."  But whatever it was, Noah didn’t look upon it as innocent.  Nor, from what we can understand, did the LORD.  

This might be considered a side point to the sermon; but there are various scriptures that tell us that God takes very seriously our respect for the elderly.  He even connects the grey hair of the elderly and our proper respect for them with righteousness and fear of Himself (see Leviticus 19:32; Proverbs 16:31).  You might also remember the brief account in which God sent two bears to maul a bunch of youths who were disrespectfully mocking Elisha and his baldness (II Kings 2:23-24).

Again, I am not Noah’s judge, but I do feel that he must, in the resurrection, take some of the blame on what happened here.  If Noah and his family had stayed "on the road" as commanded, and if they hadn't come to that full stop, Noah wouldn't have grown a vineyard; and if he hadn't have grown that vineyard, he wouldn't have made and drank so much wine, and he wouldn't have got himself drunk, this problem would never have taken place and history would likely have turned out very differently.

Still, Noah was blessed to live a good long life; but even so, he was still human and eventually went the way of all mankind:

29:  And all the days of Noah were nine hundred and fifty years: and he died.

Ye4s, he died at 950 years old!  Wow!  I believe this to be true; but I do have a problem with the timing of this statement – as to where it is recorded in the Genesis account.  Let me mention my concern in more detail as we now leave chapter 9 now and move into chapter 10.

I want to preface the next section of the sermon by telling you that I don’t believe that the time-line that the Bible presents right here is the actual sequence of when things happened after "the wine incident."  

The scriptures sometimes do this.  I am not saying that the scriptures are wrong, nor that the people who wrote them wrote something wrong.  Just that the scriptures sometimes make a basic statement and then go back in time to fill in the details.  As an example, we read about the creation of Adam and Eve in Genesis 1:27.  And then in the next chapter (Genesis 2:7, 18-23), the writer goes back and goes into more detail of their creation.  I believe that is what happened here with the statement about Noah's death.

We know that, at the time of the flood, Noah was 600 years old; and of course, we know how old he was when he died – 950.  But we don’t know how old he was at the time of the wine incident.

It gets interesting here, because the Babel account follows right after the mention of Noah’s death, and because of that we tend to assume that the Babel incident actually occurred soon after Noah’s death?  But there is a very good possibility – I would say probability – that Noah was still very much alive at the time of the Babel incident.

If we look at the time-lines of the ages of the patriarchs, we see that Noah died just two years before the birth of Abram.  This presents some supplementary questions, which we will go into as we go forward; but for now, let’s put the time of Noah’s death on the back burner, and let’s move on to the activities of his progeny.

What did his children do next?  Did they continue to go forth and scatter themselves across the face of the earth, as they were commanded by God? 

Before we answer that question, let’s dig into chapter 10, which details a few generations of the families of Shem, Ham and Japheth:

Genesis 10:
1:  Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth: and unto them were sons born after the flood…
5:  By these were the isles of the Gentiles divided in their lands; every one after his tongue, after their families, in their nations.

We can be sure that this "dividing" did not happen until after the Babel incident.  Also, by the way, verse mentions the “isles of the Gentiles”; but there was no such thing as a Gentile for many, many years after this.  A Gentile is a non-Israelite, and there was no such a thing as an Israelite or a non-Israelite until at least the time of Jacob – whose name the LORD changed to "Israel."

Still in Genesis 10, let’s go now to verse 22, and let’s read about the children of Shem:

22:  The children of Shem; Elam, and Asshur, and Arphaxad, and Lud, and Aram.
30:  And their dwelling was from Mesha, as you go unto Sephar a mount of the east.
31:  These are the sons of Shem, after their families, after their tongues, in their lands, after their nations.

Please notice the phrase "after their tongues."  Once again, this must have been after the Babel incident.

Now, for our purposes let’s back up to verse 6, and let’s home in on the genealogy of Ham.  I am not sure if this significant, but Ham receives the most attention here.  He gets fifteen verses compared with ten verses for Shem, and only four verses for poor Japheth!  Let’s take that for what it is, and let’s go into verse 6:

6:  And the sons of Ham {were} Cush, and Mizraim, and Phut, and Canaan.
7:  And the sons of Cush; Seba, and Havilah, and Sabtah, and Raamah, and Sabtecha: and the sons of Raamah; Sheba, and Dedan.
8:  And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth.
9:  He was a mighty hunter before {Hebrew paniym: against} the LORD: wherefore it is said, :Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before {against} the LORD."
10:  And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar.

Please note who the king of Babel was.  It was Nimrod!

What about Canaan – Ham’s son who had been cursed by Noah.  The author takes time and space to go into the detail of his progeny, staring in verse 15:

15:  And Canaan begat Sidon his firstborn, and Heth,
18:  And the Arvadite, and the Zemarite, and the Hamathite: and afterward were the families of the Canaanites spread abroad.
19:  And the border of the Canaanites was from Sidon, as you come to Gerar, unto Gaza; as you go unto Sodom, and Gomorrah, and Admah, and Zeboim, even unto Lasha.
20:  These are the sons of Ham, after their families, after their tongues, in their countries, and in their nations...
32:  These are the families of the sons of Noah, after their generations, in their nations: and by these were the nations divided in the earth after the flood.

But not just "after the flood."  Also after Babel!

Now let us ask our question again: Did Noah’s children continue to scatter themselves across the face of the earth, as commanded by God?

Genesis 11:1:
And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.

It says “the whole earth”; but they hadn’t too long been out of the ark and down from Ararat.  So it seems that "the whole earth" is referring to the eight surviving people from the ark – plus those who had been born to them by this time.

How much time had gone by since they left Ararat?  The various genealogies tell us it was about a hundred years.  Noah to Ham to Cush to Nimrod is a space of only three generations. 

Still, if they had been obeying God by being fruitful and multiplying for all of those hundred years (one of God’s commands that most of mankind finds easiest to obey – or used to, at least!), there could have been quite a lot of them by this time.

2a:  And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar…

My first question on this verse is: Who were “they”?  Were they possibly just the Hamites – perhaps as implied by the genealogy verses about Ham, Cush, and Nimrod which we read in chapter 10?  Or could it be referring to all of the people from the ark and all of their children – the Shemites, the Hamites and the Japhethites – as is implied by verse 1 of this chapter 11?  This second view is the most commonly accepted one.

But if this second view was truly the case and if it was Nimrod who spearheaded the building of the tower and the city, then it is important to remember that Noah – who lived for 950 years – was probably still alive at the time of the Babel episode.  So where was he?  And what was he doing?

We don't have all the answers to all the questions; but let’s just throw some very approximate dates around:

• Noah was born about 2948 BC and lived for 950 years until about 1998 BC,
• Ham was born about 2443 BC, 
• The Flood took place about 2348 BC – when Noah was 600 years old,
• Cush was born shortly after the Flood – possibly about 2340 BC,
• Nimrod was born about 2295 BC,
• Babel was built approximately 2247 BC – about 100 years after the Flood,
• Noah was about 700 years old at the time of the building of Babel; 
  and so he still had 250 years of human life left in him,
• Noah died only two years before the birth of Abram!

More questions:  Where was Noah at the time of the Babel incident?  Did he stay back in his vineyard?  Or did he maintain the leadership over his extended, rapidly-growing family?  Or was Nimrod effective in usurping Noah’s leadership?

If Noah did maintain the overall leadership, is it plausible that he – who is called "righteous" in at least five scriptures – would have allowed the building of Babel if he would have been present with the builders?

My second concern with this verse (2)  – though perhaps not a very relevant one to our study – is the geographical accuracy of the phrase "from the east."  If you locate Mount Ararat, Shinar and Babel in a Bible Atlas, you will see that Ararat was far north of Shinar and Babel – not east of it. 

The only really logical interpretation of this is that, perhaps for ease of travel (via river valleys rather than rough, untrodden mountain trails), they travelled southward from Ararat, perhaps via the Tigris river valley, then they would have had to walk westward (i.e. "from the east")? into Shinar.

Still, whatever was the actual case, once they arrived at this Plain of Shinar, what did they do?

2b: … and they dwelt there.

Yes.  They dwelt there!  Temporarily?  Nomadically – on their way to repopulate the earth, as God had commanded? 

No!  The Hebrew verb for “dwelt” here is yashab (Strong’s 3427), which can mean sit, abide, inhabit, remain, tarry, set, continue, place, still, sit down, to be set, stay, have one’s abode, and to cause to be inhabited.

So, by all accounts, when we read that one little word, yashab, we must believe that they were there for good.  Or at least they thought they were there for good!

If we were to give these Noahites the benefit of the doubt, thinking about this from a purely human point of view, they had been on the road for a hundred years; so perhaps it was natural for them to have wanted to put down roots. 

Most people would prefer not to be nomadic – although there are some groups such as the Bedouin of the Middle East and North Africa, the Tinkers and Romani (a.k.a. Gypsy) peoples of Europe, and some North American Indian (First Nations) tribes who seem to like the nomadic way of life.

Maybe these Noahites thought that, although they knew that the LORD wanted them to scatter themselves across the face of the earth, it was acceptable to Him that, plausibly, various groups of them would eventually arrive at their final dwelling places.  And if so, was this it?   Was Babel it?

3:  And they said one to another, “Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar.

This indicates that they possessed a fair level of technology.  To us the word "slime" sounds a bit "low-tech."  But the Hebrew noun chemar (which stems from the verb chamar) can mean a kind of processed, perhaps bitumen-based, asphalt which is native to that area. 

It should come as no surprise that these people, some of whom had possessed the ability to build the amazing ark to God’s specifications, were also able to build a city and a grand tower:

4a:  And they said, “Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven…

But again, what we are seeing here is that this was no temporary sojourn.  The fact that these people were building a city proves that they intended to stay for good. 

Different teams of archeologists have found various sets of remains, in what they believe was the Babel area and claimed them to be the actual ruins of the Tower of Babel.

Some think that this tower might have been a ziggurat – an early type of pyramid.  Some Biblical scholars believe that this Tower of Babel project might have been a Satan-devised plan – perhaps via Nimrod – to get to the "third heaven" of God’s throne; either just to see Him there, or even to knock Him off His throne and to take over the rulership of the universe. 

Considering how technically advanced they were to be able to build a city and this potentially amazing tower, I ask myself, Did they really believe that the top of their tower could reach to the Third Heaven?  Or as, according to some scholars and experts, there is some evidence that this reference to the top of the tower reaching heaven might be because it was intended to have been some kind of observatory – perhaps for astrological purposes rather than astronomical ones.

But again, let's admit that we don't have all the answers to all the questions.

We will continue next time in Part 2, and we will go back to to seek more lessons from the Babel account. 

But the main point I've been trying to get across to you in this fist sermon of the series is that, in those early years – both post-Eden and post-deluge, it was clearly God's will and command for the people to "get out there" and to repopulate the whole world.

There is also an implication which perhaps does not appear until later in the biblical account that He wanted them to take His way of life along with them and for them to live by it – both on the road and wherever they finally settled.

But we'll get more into that next time.

JHP/pp/jhp