Genesis 10 and 11

 Welcome to the Daily Bible Chapter. My name is James Leroy Wilson and I invite you to join me as we discover new insights and new perspectives from a very old book.

Today we’ll be discussing two chapters.

Chapter 10

The flood that wiped out the known world presumably ended the lineage of Cain.

Apparently the descendants of Ham adapted Cain’s city-building ways. But whereas Cain seemed to build for himself, Ham’s grandson Nimrod, a warrior, hunter, and founder of Babel and other cities, did it for Jehovah/The LORD.

The names and places associated with Shem and Japheth do not stand out, but Ham is the father of Egypt and the “cursed” Canaan, whose land is located in modern-day Israel and Palestine.

“Cain.”

“Canaan.”

Coincidence?

Chapter 11

Let’s look at Jehovah/The LORD’s track record. The people can have the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, or the Tree of Life, so when they choose the Tree of Knowledge Jehovah cuts off access to the Tree of Life and man becomes mortal.

Then Jehovah decides humans are living too long, and places a limit of 120 years (Genesis 6). And then Jehovah regrets making them at all, and wipes them all out to save one righteous man, Noah, and his family.

Nothing is suggested that the tower the humans built or anything else they were doing at Babel was evil. Jehovah/The LORD deliberately comes down and divides and scatters the people because nothing is impossible for them.

It seems like Jehovah/The LORD viewed them as a threat. Or is still trying to figure things out.

Perhaps this is a parable about the need for new challenges. With Babel, it’s like we mastered a level in a video game, and now we advance to a new level with new challenges.

Maybe that’s what all of this is about. Chapter 1 creates the “universe” where the game is played. Then when we advance and things become too easy, we move on to the next challenge or we stagnate, weaken, and die.

Eden was too easy. Then, even with mortality imposed on us, the game was still too easy; when you live 900 years, you become wicked because you have nothing else to do. After the flood and presumably a different climate, and a limitation of life to 120 years, Babel proved that the game was still too easy.

Babel was a triumph and humans did nothing wrong in building the tower, but at some point we have to move on to another level of the game, a new challenge.

The rest of the chapter is about the descendents of Shem, including Terah and his son Abram and grandson Lot, who move from Ur of the Chaldeans to the land of Canaan. Canaan, you’ll remember in Chapter 9, was cursed and was to become Shem’s slave.

When I wrote about Chapter 9, I speculated that Shem represents a higher self and Ham (and therefore Egypt and Canaan) represents the lower self. Maybe this is a setup for a story of the Shem in us to conquer, subdue, or enslave this lower self.

James Leroy Wilson writes Daily Miracles, The Daily Bible Chapter, JL Cells, and The MVP Chase. Thanks for your subscriptions and support!

(Photo credit: TyshkunVictor)