The citizens on the plains of Shinar built a great city and a tower to reach up into heaven. Genesis 11:5 tells us that God “came down to see the city and the tower.” Here again, God speaks to us in human terms. It’s a figure of speech called anthropomorphism. God didn’t literally come down because He’s everywhere! It’s used to arouse attention to the fact that as man wanted to reach God’s abode, heaven, no matter how high he might build God would always have to look down upon it. Boice says, “Here were men attempting to build a great tower. The top was to reach to the heavens. It was to be so great that it and the religion and defiance of God it represented would make a reputation for these citizens of Shinar. There it stood, lofty in its unequaled grandeur. But when God wants to look at it, he comes down. He has to stoop low to see this puny extravagance.”
Flying home from Israel, we saw the huge cities below us. Philadelphia, with its man-made skyscrapers, looked so puny from several thousand feet above the earth. I remember seeing the Twin Towers once flying home from overseas and noticing they looked like a couple of small dominoes from the airplane window. The great pyramids of Egypt are specs in the sand at a certain height. It’s so for all human constructions. This is the metaphorical truth that the Tower of Babel story serves to teach us.
Boice goes on to observe, “So also with our intellectual or spiritual achievements. The greatest is nothing compared to the immensity of the universe, not to mention the universe’s Creator. The only truly significant accomplishments are God’s (sometimes in and through us), for only these partake of the nature of God and endure forever, as God does.” But God, from His vast perspective and power, looked down on us tower builders, condescended to our needs, and took the body of flesh upon himself. He became the sacrifice that would pay the penalty for our own rebellion against God. No one can reach God by any human effort. No one can satisfy the longings of the soul through any religious practice. But the Lord Jesus Christ, in His divine intervention, came down to us in order to lift us up to Him.