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Find the answers to all those questions you were too embarrassed to ask in Sunday School. Welcome to Weird Stuff in the Bible, where we explore scripture passages that are bizarre, perplexing or just plain weird. Hosted by Luke Taylor.
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Babel: Gateway to the Gods
Genesis 11
Introduction
The shocking thing about the Tower of Babel story is not that people were dumb enough to think they could build a tower to heaven.
History is full of infamously ridiculous ideas that mankind has come up with. In a world where people made medicine with mercury in it, made Coca-Cola with cocaine in it, and made two more seasons of The Office without Steve Carell in it, clearly we are prone to some bad ideas; it’s no surprise that humanity would also try to make a tower that could reach God’s heavenly domain.
The shocking thing is not that they were dumb enough to build a tower to heaven. The shocking thing is that they were smart enough to do it.
…
Yeah, that’s what I just said. They were smart enough to actually do it. After all, why else would God say this in
Genesis 11:6
“Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.”
Seriously? God believed if they could build Babel, they would be able to do anything? What exactly were these people capable of?
I find this to be weird, and I’d like to explore why God said this in the Bible.
Turn with me to Genesis 11, and let’s get weird.
[theme music]
(continued)
Welcome to Weird Stuff in the Bible, where we explore scripture passages that are bizarre, perplexing or just plain weird. This is Luke Taylor, and today we’re going to be talking about the purpose of Babel.
By the way, happy anniversary to…US, I guess. This month is the three-year anniversary of the podcast, and to commemorate that, I am sharing three interviews with you on three consecutive Fridays this month. Last Friday, we had an interview with researcher Will Blesch about “The Interdimensional War,” which actually worked wonderfully, sandwiched here between last week’s Babel episode and this one.
This Friday, I have one more interview to share with you all this month, for those of you who enjoyed my series on the Book of Enoch. I read a lot of different versions of the Book of Enoch this year; my favorite was one called the Modern Standard Version. When someone tells me that they want to read the Book of Enoch, the MSV is the one I recommend. Not only was it extremely readable and easy to digest, but it also had the most footnotes with cross references to Scripture of any Enoch reproduction I saw.
This Friday, I’ll be chatting with Kip Farrar, the creator of the Modern Standard Version of the Book of Enoch, and we’ll discuss what he learned about Scripture as he worked on this Enoch translation. So be on the lookout for that.
And now, let’s get into this week’s episode.
Jacob’s Ziggurat
I ended last week’s episode by talking about a ziggurat in the Bible: the Tower of Babel. I want to start this study by another reference to a Biblical ziggurat.
Have you ever read about Jacob’s dream where he sees a ladder to heaven with angels going up and down?
Genesis 28:12
And he dreamed, and behold, there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven. And behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it!
The weird thing about that verse is how it’s translated in different versions. The ESV calls it a ladder, as do the King Jimmies.
The NIV and CSB and others render it a little differently:
He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.
So what is it- a staircase or a ladder? Because those are two different types of structures, right?
This word in the Hebrew is sullam, and it’s somewhat mysterious because it’s the only time this word is used in Scripture. But it’s not actually all that mysterious, because the Akkadians—some of the neighbors of the Hebrews with a very similar language—used this same word, simmiltu, for “ladder” or “stairway,” which is why Bible translators aren’t sure which one is more accurate; the Akkadians also use this word for the steps that go up a ziggurat. If you remember from last week, a ziggurat is a step-pyramid, a structure we find all over the world, with a large number of them in the Mesopotamian region. And get this: the steps of a ziggurat were called both a ladder or stairway.
Which means when Jacob had his dream of a stairway to heaven, he wasn’t dreaming about a ladder like you’d go buy at Lowes. He was dreaming of a ziggurat.
And notice what he said he saw in his dream: (quote) “and the top of it reached to heaven.”
Which is the exact same thing that the builders of the ziggurat of Babel were trying to do.
They said in Genesis 11:4
“let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens”
Jacob dreamed about a ziggurat—and what did Jacob say when he woke up?
Genesis 28:17
“This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”
The gate of heaven. A spiritual gate to the heavenly realm.
Angels used it to travel between heaven and earth.
A ziggurat that at the top had a portal to heaven.
Was the ziggurat of the Tower of Babel creating a similar portal, a place where angels—or perhaps fallen angels—could descend and walk among mankind?
Gate of the Gods
Well, let’s examine Babel a little more. As we discussed last week, a ziggurat was a manmade cosmic mountain. A cosmic mountain is a mountain that connects three realms: the Heavens, the Earth, and the Underworld.
But for everything that God creates, Satan creates a false—a counterfeit—a Citrus Twist version. And Satan’s cosmic mountain was the ziggurat. Last week we talked about some of the famous ziggurats from both sides of the world; they had names like “Temple of the Foundation of Heaven and Earth” or “Temple of the Stairway to Pure Heaven.” Scholar John Walton said, “The word translated ‘stairway’ in this last example is used in the mythology as the means by which the messenger of the gods moved between heaven, earth, and the netherworld.” (Citation: Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds, Volume 1, page 62, by John Walton, as cited in Abraham Allegiant by Brian Godawa, pages 377-378)
The word ziggurat comes from the Assyrian word ziqqurratu, meaning “sacred tower or mountaintop” (citation: Ungers 133-134, as cited in The Genesis 6 Conspiracy by Gary Wayne). By the way, Nimrod—the founder of Babel—also founded the Assyrian territory (Genesis 10:10-12).
Genesis 10:10-12
The beginning of his kingdom was Babel, Erech, Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. 11 From that land he went into Assyria and built Nineveh, Rehoboth-Ir, Calah, and 12 Resen between Nineveh and Calah; that is the great city.
And if you look throughout history, you will see stories of how cosmic or celestial beings descended and met with humans on these structures. I can’t prove that those things really happened, but I can say these are pagan and occultic in nature, and therefore spiritually dangerous.
But here’s the question I left us with last week. So if these are so dangerous, then what about all the ziggurats around the world today? God obviously has allowed them to be built; why did God stop Babel? That’s what we’ll discuss today.
I’ll finish the story of Babel that I started last week; I know it’s very familiar to us, but if you want to read the whole thing, it’s in Genesis 11.
Starting at verse 4:
4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.” 5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. 6 And the Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech.” 8 So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. 9 Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth. And from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth.
…and this is why you must take four semesters of French to get a Bachelor of Arts degree.
The word “Babel” in Hebrew means “confusion.” That’s why it said the name was therefore “Babel,” because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth. So this city seemed to be the capital of Nimrod’s Kingdom, since it was the first place named in describing it, and it seems to be pretty important since this tower was built there. This Kingdom will later be known as Babylon in your Bible.
There’s some scholarly debate or dispute about the precise location of Babel. Lots of us like to say that Babel is the same city as where the modern city of Babylon is located, but some archaeologists say that the modern location of Babylon wasn’t founded until hundreds of years later, so the ancient city of Babel must have been somewhere else. Frankly, I have no idea, and the precise latitude and longitude is not that important to me. Scripture says it was in the land of Shinar; for me, that’s all I need to know. I’m not smart enough to figure out exactly where it is.
There’s another city that Nimrod founded, and that was Accad. It’s probably spelled A-C-C-A-D in your Bible, but it’s usually spelled with Ks by historians; A-K-K-A-D. So you might recognize it as that. It’s similar to ancient Hebrew. I referenced the Akkadian language earlier when I was talking about Jacob’s ladder.
In the Akkadian language, Babel means something a little bit different. It was Bab Ilu, which means “Gate of the Gods.”
Guys, that is such a monumental discovery. I gotta say it again if you didn’t hear it the first time. In Hebrew, Babel means “confusion.” In Akkadian, it meant “Gate of the Gods.” Wow.
Note what Jacob said about the ziggurat in his dream: “This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”
The word Babel in the ancient Akkadian: “Gate of the Gods.” This tells us that they saw this place as a way to open a portal to the gods, AKA the Watchers. And I want to say this about the Watchers so nobody gets confused; some are loyal to God, some are not. We see this being the case both before and after the flood. (Source for what name meant: The Gates of Hell by Derek Gilbert, first page of chapter 8)
And, of course, God took Babel seriously, and He confused the languages to halt the work.
Now: can I prove that angels, or fallen angels, or anything at all, emerged at the Tower of Babel or any of the other ancient ziggurats of history? No.
The Bible doesn’t give us a story of that happening, so therefore, I have to take anything beyond that as speculation or questionable.
So what I’d like to do now is review the facts that we’ve established about Nimrod and Babel, and then make some hypotheses based on the evidence. You do not have to agree with my hypothesis. I myself am open to any explanation that makes sense of all the details we’ve established about Nimrod, Babel and ziggurats. Out of all my episodes on Babel, this one is my most theoretical. Maybe the most theoretical episode I’ve ever done, but here’s the best explanation I have that puts all the pieces together.
Nimrod’s Plan
Here is my hypothesis.
I believe Nimrod was superhuman; that he made contact with the Watchers at a ziggurat, and that they altered his genetics to make him a Nephilim.
I believe Nimrod wanted to rule both the physical world and to overthrow God and rule the spiritual world.
I believe Nimrod was building Babel as a super-ziggurat to access the spiritual realm and make contact with fallen Watchers so that they would create more Nephilim and grant him access to heaven.
So there you have it. That is my outlandish theory. Let me now give you some of the evidence for that theory.
Two episodes ago, I talked about our introduction to Nimrod in
Genesis 10:8-9
8 Cush fathered Nimrod; he was the first on earth to be a mighty man. 9 He was a mighty hunter before the Lord. Therefore it is said, “Like Nimrod a mighty hunter before the Lord.”
I spoke about how the phrase “mighty” or “mighty man” is the Hebrew gibbowr, a word previously applied to the giants in Genesis 6, the (quote) “mighty men of old, the men of renown.” Also, the Greek Septuagint right there says Nimrod was a gigas, the Greek word for giant. And also, that phrase “before the Lord” can also mean “against the Lord,” and that’s almost certainly what the word means there. So Nimrod was a giant hunter against the Lord.
And not only was Nimrod a giant or gibbowr- he was said to be the first giant or gibbowr. How does that make sense when we know there were others before the flood? Well it doesn’t say he was the first; it says he was first “to be” a gibbowr. The CSB translation says he “began to be” a gibbowr. It means he became one; he wasn’t born one. Something happened to Nimrod to change him.
Can a Watcher change someone’s genetics? I mean, it was already weird enough just to accept the Genesis 6 view of Watchers marrying and procreating with human women, right? It’s an extra step off the reservation to say that Nimrod could be altered to be a giant. That’s really sci-fi, Luke.
But let me remind you what happened to Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 4. He has a dream of a mighty tree being cut down for 7 years. Daniel interprets it for him, saying that Nebuchadnezzar is going to be driven to live among the beasts of the field—to essentially lose his mental faculties—for seven years because of his great pride. And Nebuchadnezzar didn’t heed the warning, so that’s exactly what happened:
Daniel 4:33
Immediately the word was fulfilled against Nebuchadnezzar. He was driven from among men and ate grass like an ox, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven till his hair grew as long as eagles' feathers, and his nails were like birds' claws.
Most people read that and think, “yeah, he just went crazy for 7 years. His hair grew out, his nails grew out, he was eating grass like a wild animal. The most powerful ruler in the world just got super humbled by this judgment.
But some interpreters take it a step further. That Nebuchadnezzar’s body actually experienced a literal metamorphosis from this experience. That’s not a majority view, but it’s not a totally rejected view either. And I want you to notice who imposed this sentence on Nebuchadnezzar if you go a few verses higher:
Daniel 4:16-17
16 Let his mind be changed from a man's, and let a beast's mind be given to him; and let seven periods of time pass over him. 17 The sentence is by the decree of the watchers, the decision by the word of the holy ones, to the end that the living may know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will and sets over it the lowliest of men.’
The Watchers put this decree upon Nebuchadnezzar and say to let his mind and heart be changed; to let a beast’s be given to him. God was having a Divine Council meeting, He throws out the idea that we need to humble Nebuchadnezzar, and the Watchers are like “we got this; we know just what to do.”
Side-note, but it’s very interesting to me that both Nimrod and Nebuchadnezzar are precursors of the Antichrist—who is also called “the beast” in Revelation. But I won’t get into future prophecy today.
Now, I’m not even sure if Nebuchadnezzar had his DNA or genetics altered. We know his mind and his heart at least was, according to the text. While we can’t be 100% sure what he looked like after this transformation, we know it’s certainly possible. If God can change someone’s mind, He can change someone’s body. If He can turn a rod into a serpent and dust into gnats and water into wine, or if He can turn Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt, He can turn Nebuchadnezzar into Bigfoot. But again, I don’t know if that’s what happened. Just notice this: this was a decree of the Watchers to transform Nebuchadnezzar like this.
And if we go outside the Bible, many of the legends and stories of Nimrod—where he’s known by other names in some of them, like Gilgamesh—he is often depicted as a giant. Gilgamesh was famously said to be 2/3 god, 1/3 human. Now, think about that logically for a minute. That’s not physically possible. A person can be half of something, or a fourth of something, or an eighth of something; you can’t be one- or two-thirds something. That’s math doesn’t work through procreation. But maybe Gilgamesh didn’t become 2/3 god through procreation; maybe it was through another process.
So my first hypothesis is that Nimrod made contact with Watchers at some point in his life, and I think it was on a ziggurat but prior to Babel, and that he—because he wanted to become such a powerful human—allowed them to corrupt him and transform him into a Nephilim, aka a giant.
By the way, this is not just my theory; I call it “my theory” because I want to be clear that you don’t have to read the Bible this way, but there are others who have proposed similar ideas. Ryan Pitterson. Laura Sanger. Doug Van Dorn. Michael Lake.
So again, part one of my hypothesis or theory:
I believe Nimrod was superhuman, that he made contact with the Watchers at a ziggurat, and that they altered his genetics to make him a Nephilim.
Part 2 was this: I believe Nimrod wanted to rule both the physical world and to overthrow God and rule the spiritual world.
The evidence for this comes from where Scripture portrays Nimrod as a rebel and a globalist, and can also be translated as him being “against the Lord.”
There’s an ancient Book of Jasher that’s mentioned in Joshua 10:13 and II Samuel 1:18. It retells some of the Old Testament storyline from a different perspective. So this book goes back to ancient times; the oldest surviving copy we have is from the 13th Century AD, and we have no idea how many changes took place between the original book of Jasher mentioned in Scripture, and the version from medieval times that we have now. This isn’t like the Book of Enoch where we have versions going back to the BC era. So scholars place a very low confidence that the modern Book of Jasher is the same as the original.
On the other hand: the modern Book of Jasher is the best thing we’ve got as far as having any clue as to what the original said. I want to share what this Book of Jasher says about the Tower of Babel.
Jasher’s ninth chapter: 25 And the building of the tower was unto them a transgression and a sin, and they began to build it, and whilst they were building against the Lord God of heaven, they imagined in their hearts to war against him and to ascend into heaven. 26 And all these people and all the families divided themselves in three parts; the first said We will ascend into heaven and fight against him; the second said, We will ascend to heaven and place our own gods there and serve them; and the third part said, We will ascend to heaven and smite him with bows and spears; and God knew all their works and all their evil thoughts, and he saw the city and the tower which they were building.
So is this what the original Book of Jasher said? No idea. Can’t prove it. But this does show what people a long time ago thought was going on in the Tower of Babel story. The Book of Jasher also includes this detail, when God confuses the languages. It says: those who said, We will ascend to heaven and serve our gods, became like apes and elephants;
In other words, those who tried to make contact with the Watchers—the lowercase-g gods—were changed somehow. That they were genetically altered or went through some kind of metamorphosis. Very interesting—but again, no idea if it’s true.
And there are also many extra biblical accounts of Nimrod (or a Nimrod-type figure) doing these things. I just don’t have time to get into them today. I will try to share them in this weekend’s newsletter.
And the third part of my hypothesis today: 3. I believe Nimrod was building Babel as a super-ziggurat to access the spiritual realm and make contact with fallen Watchers so that they would create more Nephilim and grant him access to heaven to literally battle against God.
Why do I think that? Well again, I believe that Nimrod had been corrupted to become a giant through his contact with the Watchers. We looked at some textual links between Nimrod in Genesis 10 and the Nephilim in Genesis 6, with the word gibbowr in the Hebrew and gigantes in the Greek. There’s another textual link to Genesis 6 in the Tower of Babel account:
Genesis 11:4
Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.”
When they say “let us make a name for ourselves,” that’s a Hebrew word šēm (shem). That’s S-E-M, but it’s pronounced “shem.” It is the same Hebrew word found to describe the Nephilim in
Genesis 6:4
The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men [gibborim] who were of old, the men of renown.
The word “renown” right there is the Hebrew word šēm again; it literally says “men of the name.” Men who had made a name for themselves. They were well-known; they were legendary. And in the Tower of Babel story, the people say, “Let us build ourselves….a tower…and let us make a name for ourselves.”
I believe they saw what happened to Nimrod; perhaps his plan was to transform not just himself, but to get a whole army of Nephilim/giants who would attempt to overthrow heaven. And so the Tower of Babel not only gave the Watchers an opportunity to do this to the people, but would have allowed Nimrod to have access to heaven.
Again, like I said last week, I don’t believe they could have literally defeated God. There are a million things God could do to frustrate their plans, and of course, He ends up scattering their languages to nip this problem in the bud.
God’s Response
And just imagine the moment that God does this.
Genesis 11:6-7
6 And the Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech.”
When God says “us” right there, God is speaking to members of the Divine Council. I know some teach this as God speaking within the members of the Trinity, and that’s possible, but it’s atypical for God to speak in plural form. It’s more likely that God is speaking to other members of His Divine Council with that statement.
So just think about the scene for a minute. The people are trying to make contact with the Watchers. The lesser gods. They’re going to all this trouble to make contact with the lowercase-g gods of heaven. And from their portal, out steps the Creator capital-G God of the Universe.
That’s like, imagine you’re calling your state senator, or perhaps the governor, trying to get his attention about something. You call and call and call and call and are trying to make contact with your state governor. And then—finally—there’s an answer on the other end of the line, and the President of the United States answers the phone. You’d be like, “whoops. Didn’t think that was gonna happen.”
And that’s what the builders at Babel did. They bit off more than they could chew. God Himself appears, but it’s not a victorious moment for the people. God gives them each a new language to speak and scatters them across the earth.
So the last question I’d like to address today is “why?” Out of all the other ziggurats around the world, why did God take this particular event so seriously? And that’s what we’ll discuss as we wind down.
[musical interlude]
Why Babel Broke the World
To wrap up today: I cannot prove that angelic or heavenly beings have ever appeared at the tops of ziggurats and interacted with people. We have lots of stories of that happening outside the Bible; this is kind of the “ancient aliens” theory of world history. But it’s not something I have hard evidence of.
Here are some things, however, that we do know:
1- Cosmic mountains were places where man entered the spiritual realm and interacted with spiritual beings
2- Ziggurats were seen as manmade cosmic mountains
3- Babel was a ziggurat
4- Babel means “Gate of the Gods” in Akkadian
5- God stated that Babel represented some sort of threat if it was allowed to be completed
6- Other ziggurats exist around the world that God has allowed to be constructed.
Now as we know, God has allowed a lot of things in this world that we don’t understand. Mosquitoes. Daylight Savings Time. Kansas. And six Sharknado movies. What made Babel so dangerous that God personally stopped it?
There was something different about the world before Babel vs after Babel. Not only that: there were two things that were different.
#1- before Babel, humanity was united.
This is a major emphasis in the story.
Genesis 11:1 said
Now the whole earth had one language and the same words.
Verse 6 says
Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language…
They had unity; but mankind had united in evil. And so the judgment is breaking up that unity. The story ends with the words
In verse 9
And from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth.
They were scattered. So one thing that was different before Babel vs after Babel was the unity of mankind. But there’s something else that was different, and this was in the spiritual realm.
#2- before Babel, the Watchers/Sons of God were united. After Babel, they were divided up just like humanity was.
Deuteronomy 32:8-9 say
When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance,
when he divided mankind,
he fixed the borders of the peoples
according to the number of the sons of God.
But the Lord's portion is his people,
Jacob his allotted heritage.
The inheritance that it means there refers to land, which is very obvious when you read it in-context. It says that the borders of these nations were put in place based upon the divisions Sons of God. The Watchers were united prior to Babel as well; after Babel, they were all separated.
Deuteronomy 4:19-20 also makes this point:
And beware lest you raise your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, you be drawn away and bow down to them and serve them, things that the Lord your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven.
When it says the stars and host of heaven, it’s referring to celestial beings. The gods. And it says there that they have been allotted to the peoples, too. And this is why, when you get to places like Daniel 10, you’ll see the “Prince of Persia” and “Prince of Greece” mentioned. They are the principalities over those nations.
Not only were the peoples of the earth scattered at Babel; the Watchers of the heavens were scattered as well.
And I would say this is why the ziggurat at Babel was particularly troublesome, but others are allowed to exist. The ziggurats at South America, or North America, or Asia, or the Egyptian pyramids, were not good. They were pagan. They might be spiritually defunct today—just relics of a bygone era—but they weren’t good.
But they were also just ziggurats for one people group, with a limited number of Watchers they could call down. Their damage is more limited or contained to one region.
Babel was set to be a global problem with all mankind and all watchers at risk of corruption. And so God had to separate us and basically put us in timeout for the past several thousand years.
And yet, that was not God’s original plan. God’s desire for us is to be a united humanity. In Genesis 12, right after Babel, God expresses this to Abraham.
Genesis 12:3 says
I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.
And right there, Abraham goes to Bethel and builds an altar; the exact spot where Jacob will later say, “This is the gate of heaven.”
In the Old Testament, Israel was God’s inheritance. Israel was His portion. But in the New Testament, we learn that we Christians have been grafted in; today, we are His portion. No matter what nation where you may find yourself, no matter what language you speak, we are part of God’s sacred territory. Jesus is our gate to heaven.
Thanks for listening, God bless you for sticking around until the end, and we’ll see you next time on Weird Stuff in the Bible.