Tag: Nebuchadnezzar

How to Read the Bible — As Ancient and Translated but Timeless

This series of posts was first a series of sermons I preached at City South Presbyterian and Coorparoo Presbyterian in mid 2026. You can, if it is your preferred medium, watch the video recording of this sermon here (Vimeo), or listen to the audio recording here (Spotify link).

Have you heard Eskimos have 50 words for snow?

This is used to support a disputed theory that our thinking is limited to the words in our language called “linguistic determinism” (it turns out we also think in images and through experiences). But, while debunking this theory, scholars have discovered ways language orients us to the world.

The Kuuk Thaayorre (cook thai-oar) people of North Queensland have been big here.

They do not use ‘self-oriented’ descriptions of space — like ‘left’ or ‘right’ — no matter which way they are facing they talk about east or west, and think of time moving east to west, and instead of saying ‘how are you going’ they say ‘where are you going’… and it turns out they have incredible spatial awareness. This is an example of how language helps us know where we are; mapping out reality; and making sense of it all…

I wonder if you can make sense of these words. This is the Hebrew of Bereshit 1:26; that is Hebrew for “in the beginning.”

וַיֹּ֣אמֶר אֱלֹהִ֔ים נַֽעֲשֶׂ֥ה אָדָ֛ם בְּצַלְמֵ֖נוּ כִּדְמוּתֵ֑נוּ וְיִרְדּוּ֩ בִדְגַ֨ת הַיָּ֜ם וּבְע֣וֹף הַשָּׁמַ֗יִם וּבַבְּהֵמָה֙ וּבְכׇל־הָאָ֔רֶץ וּבְכׇל־הָרֶ֖מֶשׂ הָֽרֹמֵ֥שׂ עַל־הָאָֽרֶץ׃

Genesis 1:26

Or these ones — the Greek of Pros Kolasseis — Colossians 1:15…

ὅς ἐστιν εἰκὼν τοῦ θεοῦ τοῦ ἀοράτου, πρωτότοκος πάσης κτίσεως

Colossians 1:15

When we translate and read these words from ancient Hebrew and Greek into English we are also making a jump across time — and across ways of being oriented to the world; and sometimes we need a map.

When we read the words of the Bible they are ancient, timeless, and translated.

For our nuts and bolts we are considering translation — how we get our English Bibles — and how to understand ancient words.

The Old Testament is written in Hebrew, with a bit of Aramaic, which shares an alphabet and some vocabulary.

About 200 years before Jesus it was translated and read in Greek, the LXX.

The New Testament is written in a form of Greek called Koine…

In the early church, by about 300AD, people are working with both Hebrew and Greek texts — and we have got Greek Bibles collated in book form from this time.

The Roman Empire splits into the Greek speaking East, and Latin speaking West in 395AD, and ten years later a guy named Jerome translates the Greek and Hebrew into a Latin version called the Vulage.

The Latin speaking Catholic Church embraces this, while the Eastern Orthodox church uses Greek. Languages in the Western half of the empire fragment, so Latin is mostly used by royalty and clergy, but not the ‘common language’ of the people.

About 1,000 years later, this guy Wycliffe translates the Bible into English.

The Latin-speaking church hated this so much that after he died, they declared him a heretic, dug him up and burned him… 100 years later, Jan Hus translated the Bible into Czech; he was burned at the stake.

This was not just because they translated the words; their translations allowed them to be critical of the church in the language of the people. Both Wycliffe and Hus translated from the Vulgate.

This set the scene for Martin Luther; who translated the Bible into German in the 1500s, and used the printing press to get the Bible, and his criticisms of the church, into the hands of the common person. He translated from the authoritative Hebrew Old Testament — the Masoretic Text, which was circulated from around the 7th century — that is AD — and Luther a Greek New Testament put together by a Catholic contemporary, Erasmus.

100 years later the Reformation had gained political traction in England, and the King James Version — also translated from the Hebrew and Greek — was released.

Almost all modern translations are working from the original languages; differences are not so much about the source material — text criticism stuff, when decisions are made on those issues they are usually footnoted; the differences are about translation philosophies; translations are built on this spectrum from formal to dynamic equivalent.

The formal side can be clunky and literal. The dynamic tries to capture the meaning of words, even some of the style.

The ESV is on one end of this spectrum, the NIV is on the other…

Translating is tricky.

Hebrew and Greek structure sentences differently to English, and there are less words in their vocabulary, which gives more room for wordplay and double meanings, and words have a broader range of possible meanings than English, where we are so specific.

Hebrew and Greek have tens of thousands of words, while English has more than 170,000 words.

Translators do an incredible job getting the word of God into our hands so we do not have to learn Hebrew and Greek to read it…

But. Translation always involves interpretation; and cause English is familiar to those of us who think in English, sometimes we can domesticate the Bible; imposing our orientation onto it, or we can be guided by or reoriented by translation decisions, and the layers of meaning that build up as the church talks about words and concepts, that move us away from the ancient meaning and to read well, sometimes we have to dig away these layers to get back to the text.

To show what I mean we are going to do what is called a word study together on the word image.

Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness
The Son is the image of the invisible God

Genesis 1:26; Colossians 1:15

We are made in the image and likeness of God.

Jesus is the image of the invisible God — or rather we are tselem Elohim, and Jesus is the eikon Theou.

When the Old Testament is translated into Greek, this word tselem is translated into eikon — which is used in Genesis — actually the Greek name for the book, and Colossians.

When it is translated into Latin, Image of God is “imaginem Dei” — or imago Dei.

This meme landed in my feed recently.

It says “it’s a key doctrinal belief that humans are created in the image of God” — we “reflect his character in unique ways, through rational thought, moral awareness, rational capacity, and dominion over creation” and “every person you encounter,” regardless of their status or identity, carries this imprint which is why human life is sacred and worthy of dignity.”

Now whether you think “imago Dei” or “Image of God” this is probably what you think, right? But — this is an example of layers of meaning — both the integration of biblical ideas, and the way language moves beyond the ancient meaning over time.

The Deity beholds and hears all things, and searches all things out: you too have the power of apprehension of things by means of sight and hearing, and the understanding that inquires into things and searches them out.

Gregory of Nyssa, On the Making of Man, 379AD

So, this guy Gregory of Nyssa wrote a Greek book about the nature of humans in 379AD; he said because God sees, hears, and knows and we do too; the essence of the eikon is in this rational capacity.

“It is clear, therefore, that intellectual creatures alone, properly speaking, are made to God’s image.”

Aquinas, Summa Theologia, 1260s AD

Plenty of people write about imago Dei; maybe the most influential is Thomas Aquinas, in the 1200s, who also saw it being our intellect.

These are major authorities shaping the Catholic tradition, so in Vatican II — in a Latin document titled ‘Gauium Et Spes’ — Joy and Hope — this section — “On the Dignity of the Human Person,” and chapter “On humanity as the image of God,” says authentic freedom is the sign of the divine image; especially to know and choose right from wrong — intellect, freedom, dignity — this is basically the meme right?

“True freedom, however, is an exceptional sign of the divine image in the human person.”

Man achieves such dignity when, emancipating himself from all captivity to passion, he pursues his goal in a spontaneous choice of what is good

Vatican II, Gaudium et Spes

But is this what a tselem is in Genesis?

There are rich truths in the meme, and these traditions, and thousands of years of reflection on the imago Dei in Greek, and Latin — in church tradition, but church traditions can add these layers; and we do not just have tradition or doctrines, we can look at the way words are used through the story of the Bible in their original languages — we will call this internal intertextuality — and across the ancient world — external intertextuality.

Translators are not typically being intertextual like this; they are working to make a sentence make sense within its meaning unit; they are not as literary or intertextual as the authors of the Bible. Let me show you this with two famous stories you might think are unrelated.

First — Noah — the earth is full of violence and evil; God chooses Noah to build a floating box; an ark — from trees and tar — to preserve life (Genesis 6:14), so God’s people can be fruitful and multiply. Noah’s family are saved through the waters (Genesis 9:1).

Second — Moses — God’s people are fruitfully multiplying in Egypt, and Pharaoh fills the earth with violence; killing babies (Exodus 1:7); but Moses’ mum puts him in a box — a basket, made of reeds and tar — to preserve his life on the water, so God’s people can be fruitful (Exodus 2:3).

You might think I am forcing the links here; but the same Hebrew word is used for ark and basket; but this literary link is lost in translation cause they are literally a boat and basket.

Anyway. Let us look at tselem…

The writer of Genesis develops our picture of a tselem — an image of God — by zooming in to God breathing into a dust shape to make it live (Genesis 2:7), in this garden in Eden (Genesis 2:8), where there is water flowing from the Tigris and Euphrates (Genesis 2:14).

When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image; and he named him Seth.

“Whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall their blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made mankind.

Genesis 5:3; 9:6

Tselem is used two more times in Genesis — Genesis 5 throws back to the beginning in order to tell us Adam makes a son; his own image, in his likeness — part of being an image is being offspring… Then the tselem Elohim idea is used, after the flood, where God prohibits taking human life, cause it is sacred.

Once of rats and tumors (1 Samuel 6:5), but mostly for idol statues — in Numbers (Numbers 33:52), 2 Kings (2 Kings 11:18), and Ezekiel (Ezekiel 7:20). Which is interesting given Israel is commanded not to make or worship idols of other humans, or any form they are made to rule over (Deuteronomy 4:16–18), this is the first two commandments (Deuteronomy 5:8–9)… and these laws use language from Genesis 1; part of the idea is that the living God has made his own living statues to represent him — and worshipping dead statues — being ruled by them — makes us dead.

Here is where we go intertextual elsewhere — in part 1 we looked briefly at the Dead Sea Scrolls; these jars of Jewish manuscripts in Greek and Hebrew that help us understand how contemporaries of Jesus read the Scriptures.

Archaeologists have also found a treasure trove of stone inscriptions — book tablets — from Israel’s ancient neighbours, Babylon and Assyria — mostly written in Akkadian; a language with a different alphabet, that often has similar sounding words — these tablets are from the library of an Assyrian king named Ashurbanipal.

In one tablet Ashurbanipal — boasts like Solomon, about “learning wisdom”; mastering reading and writing so he could read Akkadian — he “had the joy of reading inscriptions on stone from before the time of the flood…”

‘I Ashur-bani-pal, within the palace, learned the wisdom of Nebo, the entire art of writing on clay tablets of every kind. I made myself master of the various kinds of writing. . .

I read the beautiful clay tablets from Sumer and the Akkadian writing, which is hard to master. I had the joy of reading inscriptions on stone from the time before the flood.’

Ashurbanipal inscription

There is an Akkadian flood story called the Gilgamesh Epic.

I asked if you could read Hebrew…

How about Akkadian cuneiform?

What about when it is translated into our alphabet? This is an inscription about Assurnasirpal — king 200 years before Library guy.

ṣalam šarrūtišu ina dmūt pānišu epušma ana dNinurta ušziz

Inscription from Assurnasirpal, King of Assyria

It uses the words salam and damut; related to the Hebrew words tselem and demut — image and likeness… The king boasts he made an image of his kingship in the likeness of his face, installing it in his God’s temple.

“I made an image of my kingship in the likeness of my face and erected it for Ninurta, my lord.”

Inscription from Assurnasirpal, King of Assyria

Throughout the ancient world kings would make idol statues of themselves and put them in temples — and act as guardians of these statues, only the king was the image of God. Eventually, as you encountered these statues in temples, you would worship them too. There are lots of overlaps between these sources and the Bible; and they are helpful guides for understanding what words mean; this overlap in language and stories makes sense…

Abram — the father of Israel is called out of Ur of the Chaldeans — that is Babylon — we should expect these cultures to share stories and words (Genesis 11:27–28); and these same stories and words — and images — become the basis of Israel’s temptation to worship the gods and god-kings of the nations that lead them to exile in Babylon; where, again, Babylon’s stories and images of God compete for their hearts.

When a sky above had not (yet even) been mentioned, (And) the name of firm ground below had not [yet even] been thought of…

Enuma Elish

The tablet library contained a Babylonian creation story — the Enuma Elish — about the creation of the heavens and earth. Consider how this text compares or contrasts to Genesis 1.

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.”

— Genesis 1:1-2.

(When) only primeval Apsu, their begetter, And Mummu and Tiamat—she who gave birth to them all— Were mingling their waters in one

Enuma Elish

Apsu is the deep; Tiamat was a ‘sea-goddess of chaos’. The Enuma Elish continues. But in Babylon’s story, their god-king, Marduk creates through violence; making humans from the blood and bone of dead gods (including Tiamat), not in their likeness, to rule, but to serve the gods. Babylonian kings are then become images of Marduk.

Genesis says, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule…” (Genesis 1:26).

The Enuma Elish says:

Blood I will mass and cause bones to be, I will establish a savage, “man” shall be his name. Verily, savage-man I will create.

He shall be charged with the service of the gods, That they might be at ease!

Enuma Elish

Then it tells the story of the building of Babylon.

Build Babylon, ​the task you have sought. Let bricks for it be moulded, and raise the shrine!”

They raised the peak of Esagil… They built the lofty temple tower…

Be-l seated the gods, his fathers, at the banquet. In the lofty shrine which they had built for his dwelling…

Enuma Elish

The Enuma Elish describes Babylon being built with moulded bricks, a lofty temple tower reaching the sky; that is what Esagil means — so the gods could party. Genesis describes people making bricks (Genesis 11:3) to build the lofty tower of Babylon (Genesis 11:4)… and this power play being frustrated by Israel’s God (Genesis 11:8–9).

There are plenty of Babylonian kings who like bricks and building projects — none more than Nebuchadnezzar; a fan of the Enuma Elish, who built big temple towers, in Babylon, with bricks stamped with his name… And who Daniel describes building a giant tselem — this time in Aramaic; on the plains of Babylon (Daniel 3:1), that he commands people of all languages to bow before and worship — he is trying to reverse the scattering at Babel (Daniel 3:4–5).

“I added to the palace and raised it as high as a mountain with bitumen and baked brick…”

Nebuchadnezzar, Brick Inscription

There are also inscriptions describing rituals for giving life to images of God — selems.

We meet Library Guy’s grandfather, Sennacherib, and his father, Esarhaddon in 2 Kings, a couple of generations before Nebuchadnezzar takes Judah into exile (2 Kings 19:37)… Sennacherib trashed Babylon’s temples and statues — so, Esarhaddon set about restoring the deity’s presence to these images through rituals described in these inscriptions.

…the wisdom which Ashur and Marduk entrusted to me when they made me aware of the renewal of the the statue of the great gods…

Esarhaddon inscription

Esarhaddon claims Marduk chose him to restore them — the selems of the gods —

I processed with joy before him. I brought him joyfully into the heart of Babylon, the city of their honour. Into the orchards, among the canals and parterres of the temple

Esarhaddon inscription

He parades the selem into a temple orchard in the heart of Babylon; where it is renewed through these rituals.

…they entered by means of the office of the apkallu, mouth washing, mouth opening, washing and purification, before the stars of heaven.

Esarhaddon inscription

We have stone tablets outlining these rituals — by we I mean ‘the British Museum’ — water is brought from the pure spring — from the Tigris and Euphrates (remember Genesis 2)…

Water of the Apsû, brought from the midst of Eridu, water of the Tigris, water of the Euphrates, brought from a pure place…

Mis Pi ritual

Into this pure orchard where water flows — sounds like Eden —

…in the garden of the canal of the pure orchard build a bīt rimki. Bring him out to the canal of the pure orchard…

Mis Pi ritual

And the statue’s mouth is purified and opened, to eat and speak; as they say ‘this selem is made by the gods’. They are cleansed, restored, and repositioned to work as ‘images of god’…

This is the statue that Ninkura, Ninagal, Kusibanda, Ninildu, (and) Ninzadim made.

Mis Pi ritual

The Genesis 2 story sounds like the inversion of this; God making a living image by opening its mouth and nose.

Now. Here’s a couple of warnings — people go crazy with these connections; scholars describe this as parallelomania… and the guy who coined this label calls it a “disease”…

It seems to me that we are at a junction when biblical scholarship should recognise parallelomania for the disease that it is.

Samuel Sandmel, “Parallelomania,” 1962

And Robert Alter — an expert in both Hebrew and literature who has translated a beautiful version of the Old Testament, and written about the art of biblical narrative and the art of translation; he worries we can obsess about borrowed Akkadian words and miss the artistic Hebrew story…

“Bible scholars spent all their time hunting down Akkadian loanwords hidden in the text, but they didn’t know how to read a story…”

Robert Alter

And — especially as Christians, we do not want to miss how the big story is fulfilled in Jesus.

Which is all to say rather than ‘rationality’, an ancient reader of Genesis are going to see God forming living statues — tselems — that are male and female, where a statue is formed and made alive in an orchard where the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates bubble up from the ground as quite different to the picture of violent male kings who claim to be gods.

So it is not these kings who are God’s representative children; but all humans are made to represent God and rule, and fruitfully pass this on in his family.

They will read this embedded in a story that warns about worshipping breathless statues — those made by these kings — that make us dead; in contrast to the stories and inscriptions of Babylon and Assyria.

Let us track the shift from tselem to eikon… there is a text included in the Greek Old Testament, and in the Apocrypha — but not our Bibles — which Paul seems to use in Romans 1 — called the Wisdom of Solomon.

…for God created us for incorruption
and made us in the image of his own eternity…

Wisdom of Solomon 2:23

For the idea of making idols was the beginning of sexual immorality,
and the invention of them was the corruption of life, for they did not exist from the beginning,

Wisdom of Solomon 14:12–13

After tracking threads through the Prophets and Psalms, this text describes the making of eikons as the root of human corruption… This is very Romans 1…

Then the ungodly custom, grown strong with time, was kept as a law,
and at the command of monarchs carved images were worshiped.

Wisdom of Solomon 14:16

And it follows this thread through history from kings making carved images to be worshipped, to people making images of these kings to honour them from a distance… flattering them.

When people could not honour monarchs in their presence, since they lived at a distance,
they imagined their appearance far away and made a visible image of the king whom they honoured…

…so that by their zeal they might flatter the absent one as though present.

Wisdom of Solomon 14:17

Then the ambition of the artisan impelled even those who did not know the king to intensify their worship. For he, perhaps wishing to please his ruler, skillfully forced the likeness to take more beautiful form…

Until honour became worship…

…and the multitude, attracted by the charm of his work, now regarded as an object of worship the one whom shortly before they had honoured as a human.

Wisdom of Solomon 14:18–29

With misspent toil, these workers form a futile god from the same clay— these mortals who were made of earth a short time before and after a little while go to the earth from which all mortals are taken. But the workers are not concerned that mortals are destined to die or that their life is brief, but they compete with workers in gold and silver and imitate workers in copper, and they count it a glorious thing to mold counterfeit gods.

Wisdom of Solomon 15:8–9

These eikons — whether of gods or kings — are counterfeit gods. We would never see a pastor championing a gold-coated image of a political ruler to ‘honour them’ would we… This is fine.

Nothing could go wrong… There’s nothing in what this pastor from the U.S said that resonates with that ancient document…

This statue was not created for worship. It was created as a symbol of resilience, patriotism, courage, and gratitude. It was created to honour a man…

Pastor Mark Burns

When Jesus is born, Roman Caesars are following the game plan; making images of themselves, installing them in temples; being called gods and sons of God.

“His image was placed among the gods, and he had an altar dedicated with the inscription to the genius of Julius …”

Suetonius, Life of the Caesars

…the birthday of the god Augustus was the beginning of the good tidings for the world that came by reason of him…

Priene inscription

Mark opens, “The beginning of the good news about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God…” (Mark 1:1).

The New Testament authors are very conscious of how icons are tied to worship not just politics.

That is what is going on with the coins featuring Caesar’s icon and inscription, where Jesus says give God what has got his image on it…

“Whose image is this? And whose inscription?”
“Caesar’s,” they replied.
Then he said to them, “So give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”

Matthew 22:20–21

And it is there at Jesus’ trial and crucifixion; he is under Roman law, for claiming to be king — the son of God — as Israel’s leaders bend the knee to Caesar’s image: “Anyone who claims to be a king opposes Caesar” and “We have no king but Caesar” (John 19:12, 15).

These are pictures of two kingdoms; two images of God — going head to head.

The cross being contrasted with the sword of Rome. Caesar’s statues being compared with the living image of the God of the Bible.

So Colossians tells the big story of the Bible — and the gospel — as a culmination of the story of images of God; revealing what a true human is restored and re-made for; when we are restored from captivity and darkness.

Paul says God has filled the church with the knowledge of his will that comes from the Spirit (Colossians 1:9); made us alive with his breath so we can be fruitful (Colossians 1:10), while the “Son is the image of the invisible God” in whom all things were created; that he is the “head of the body, the church” and that “all God’s fulness dwells in him” (Colossians 1:12-16)… in chapter 3 he will say we are renewed images of God (Colossians 3:9–10).

He says we have been repositioned, out of the kingdom of darkness, into God’s presence as his children in the kingdom of light (Colossians 1:13-14). Repositioned. Redeemed. Restored as image bearers. Revivified by the ‘breath’ or Spirit of God in our bodies.

Think of the ancient king restoring a desecrated image…

As our sins are forgiven and we are purified so we can dwell with God again, and represent him; following the template we see in Jesus, the eikon of the invisible God.

Jesus is the one who actually shows us who God is; the radiance of his glory; the word made flesh — the firstborn — there is that sonship idea again — and also the ruler and the representative of what God is like…

He is not just like God though; all things were created in him, through him, and for him; and our image bearing is not separate to him but through being united to him, living as his body. We are reconciled to God cleansed through his blood shed on the cross. Brought from exile into Eden-like proximity — before God’s face — restored, and repositioned (Colossians 1:22).

The image of God isn’t just about dignity and rationality — it is about relationship and function. It is eradicated through idolatry, which leads to exile and death, and restored through Jesus, our king, who cleanses us and leads us through the valley, into the temple of God’s presence, and who by God’s Spirit, restores our souls — recreating us to live as God’s children who dwell in his house forever. This calls us from the lure of other images of power, into something glorious and life-giving.

We do not need the Ancient background for this message to be timeless; but, when we remember the Bible is translated and look under the surface, it is rich.

August 27, 2026 Add Comment

Origin Story — Why be a brickman when you can be a brick, man?

This is an amended version of a sermon I preached at City South Presbyterian Church in 2022. If you’d prefer to listen to this (Spotify link), or watch it on a video, you can do that. It runs for 43 minutes.

Do you want your name to last beyond your time here on Earth? I don’t know my grandfather’s father’s name on either side of my family. Do you?

It’s unlikely any of us will be remembered in a hundred years. And I’m increasingly okay with that—I guess because I realize that there are people whose names we remember because they did outrageously awful things, like Judas, Hitler, Nimrod, or John Dring, who invented the first instant coffee in 1771.

We can try to make a name for ourselves—but others have sought to make a name for their city or nation.

Building projects—making giant stuff—is one way to put a place ‘on the map,’ like Coffs Harbour with its Big Banana, Nambour with its Big Pineapple, or the Gold Coast with its Big Clive. If anybody has tried to make a name for themselves in Australia this year—Nimrod style—it’s the guy who has put up billboards and images of himself everywhere.

This isn’t just an Aussie thing—we do like our big things—but in Brazil, there’s a town trying to make a name for itself using the name and image of Jesus.

Obviously, Rio de Janeiro has had its Christ the Redeemer statue for ages; this town, Encantado, has built a taller Jesus statue—five meters taller—Christ the Protector.

I just love this image from construction time.

But now, you can take photos from his heart.

How lovely.

Just what Jesus and the first commandment wanted us to do.

You can book your holidays now—and while you’re there—maybe you could book a trip to the Creation Museum in America— built by Aussie Ken Ham— where work is beginning on a Tower of Babel; a life-size replica.

Human projects are so often part of us attempting heaven on Earth projects in our name, not God’s. And look, neither the Jesus statues nor the replica Tower of Babel are only built to make a person or town’s name famous, but they feel like other big things. Tourist attractions rather than architecture representing heaven on Earth like—say—the Temple in the Old Testament.

I can’t help thinking the builders of these projects haven’t quite nailed the way the Bible approaches monumental building projects—whether they’re bricks and mortar, or ways to promote His name.

So the Babel story has some background. One way to read it is as a prequel to the events we read last week because here the whole world’s got one language (Genesis 11:1). In chapter 10, in the table of nations, the text says these nations spread across the world each with their own languages (Genesis 10:5). It’s also more of the Bible’s origin story of Babel — Babylon— which we were told Nimrod built last week (Genesis 10:10). The passage starts on the plain of Shinar (Genesis 11:2-3), a word that’s also translated as “Babylonia” in the Old Testament, like in Daniel (Daniel 1:3). We’ll see that this story relates to other origin stories, and especially the Enuma Elish, the story of the creation of the city of Babylon and its temple tower as a gateway between the heavens and the earth.

There’s also some Genesis backstory that I reckon should inform the way we see this. Let’s remember that in the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth (Genesis 1:1), and that for the first readers of this text, their concept of reality was that heaven is high above the earth—through the dome. God created humans to represent Him on Earth like God rules—with the ‘us’ He speaks to in Genesis 1—in the heavens (Genesis 1:26-28, Psalm 8:5-6).

We’ve seen how there are other heavenly beings who are part of a divine council — heavenly rulers — in the Bible’s story, and how some of these sons of God tried to bring heaven to Earth on their own terms in the whole Nephilim episode; they try to bring heaven down (Genesis 6:4). I mentioned then that Babel is a mirror of that story with humans trying to bring heaven and Earth together from the ground, even from bricks made from the ground (Genesis 11:4).

There’s just a couple of other things to bear in mind here too — we open with this final move eastward (Genesis 11:2). This is as far east of Eden as we get in the story of Genesis; that movement that began with humanity’s exile from the garden ends here in Babylon (Genesis 3:24, 4:16), and the construction of a city (Genesis 11:4). So far cities have been bad places in Genesis; human versions of the garden, but without God. The only other use of the word city that’s used here is for the city Cain built, that became the city of his violent descendant Lamech (Genesis 4:17). The word used for city means fortified or guarded place. What’s interesting here is that the word for garden that we get in Genesis is literally an enclosed place (Genesis 2:8).

We’ve got these two sorts of places that are marked out as ‘not the wilderness’ — and I reckon they unfold in contrasting ways; one type of non-desolate land is made by God, with boundaries He establishes, while the other’s made by humans who’re trying to recreate heavenly life outside Eden — with the walls we put up, and trying to shove heavenly life in on our terms.

Walls were an interesting part of nation building — the capacity to shift life in the ancient world from nomadic to something like urban life. You can read a bunch about them in this book Walls: A History of Civilisation in Blood and Brick.

Walls separated the desolate and uninhabited land in the ancient world — where nomadic warrior people and shepherds would roam, fighting off predators, plundering the weak — from the cultured city space where people lived in comfort and security, protected from the wilderness, where they would carry their goods — and bricks — in baskets. Here’s a quote:

“The world outside their walls was not exactly uninhabited, but it was, in the eyes of the basket carriers, dangerous. This was civilization in its infancy: every city its own frontier, never far from hostile neighbors in the mountains, desert, or steppe.”

People living behind walls found comfort, security, and wealth, so kings through the ancient world would brag about their wall building as the source of their power.

Chapter 1 of Walls explores exactly this period in history — life before Babel. Before baked bricks. Before bricks walls were just mud, and they’d sink, and you couldn’t defend them. Baked bricks, like we find in Babel, brought a whole new era of building stuff to make a name for yourself, and to build with ambition; a whole new way to make new Edens, or cities. Here’s another quote:

“Lacking sufficient fuel to bake all their mud bricks, the Mesopotamians settled for drying them in the sun, a process that created building blocks of such dubious quality that they could not withstand even occasional rain.”

So we zero in on the origin story for this city — Babel — Babylon — the story of Nimrod the warrior king from chapter 10 getting people together to build a city trying to bring heaven on Earth, to make a name for himself like he’s a Nephilim; so he’s not just a mighty warrior, but a man of name. They’re on a plain — not a mountain — and he’s using this new brick technology (Genesis 10:10).

Genesis is retelling the story of the god-king Gilgamesh — whose epic is an origin story shaping the life of other nations in Mesopotamia. On the very first tablet of the Gilgamesh Epic, one of the very first boasts is that he built the wall and the temple of the city of Uruk — which Genesis 10:10 said was one of the cities Nimrod built.

Here are some quotes from the Gilgamesh Epic:

“He carved on a stone stela all of his toils, and built the wall of Uruk-Haven, the wall of the sacred Eanna Temple, the holy sanctuary. Look at its wall which gleams like copper…

Go up on the wall of Uruk and walk around, examine its foundation, inspect its brickwork thoroughly. Is not even the core of the brick structure made of kiln-fired brick…

One league city, one league palm gardens, one league lowlands, the open area of the Ishtar Temple, three leagues and the open area of Uruk the wall encloses.”

Nimrod, in the Israelite imagination, is Gilgamesh.

The Epic says these walls were made from kiln-fired bricks, and the walls encompassed this whole open area — the temple, the city, and the plains. Where that epic tells the story of Uruk, Genesis zeroes in on the Nimrod-Gilgamesh character building Babylon. We’re going to meet a later Babylonian brickman in a bit — but for now the camera’s pointed on Nimrod and his quest moving from a forgettable nomad to a builder of cities — from being a warrior on the Earth, to a warrior king directing earthworks — building walls and filling the space behind them.

Look what the goal is here as they build a city and then a tower to reach the heavens from the Earth; literally it’s a tower with its head in the heavens (Genesis 11:4). It’s the same word for the top of the mountains in the flood (Genesis 8:5). They want to make a name for themselves and not be scattered — only, we’ve just seen the nations scattered already; so we know how that’s going to go, and we know that humans were meant to fill the Earth — spreading — spreading a garden meeting place between heaven and earth made by God rather than a city made by humans (Genesis 1:28, 11:4). Remember too, somewhere in the Israelite imagination, at least according to Ezekiel, Eden was a mountain (Ezekiel 28:13-14). In Genesis 3, Eden was a meeting place between heaven and Earth, where God walked — and — that’s exactly what Nimrod and his buddies are trying to build (Genesis 3:8).

This tower to the heavens is what is called a ziggurat — a type of temple from the ancient world. It’s more than a temple, it’s a gateway between heaven and Earth. A set of steps that the gods could climb down, so Nimrod the Brickman builds one of these Ziggurats.

We have names recorded for ziggurats from nations around the same time — that are all variations on the theme ‘Mountain House’ — these buildings — like this one in Ashur that was called “the house of the mountain” — this was man-made, and its ruins look like a mountain.

Or there’s this one in Nippur called “the house of the mountain of heaven and earth” — these were man-made mountains with their heads in the heavens.

The Mesopotamian region had their own walled-garden-mountain-temple idea — their own Eden, and that’s what is being built here; a gateway, in a city, to bring divine beings — God, or sons of God — down to earth. It’s a staircase to make the events of Genesis 6 happen again — bringing heavenly life to earthly people to make their name. It’s a monumental project.

In Babylon’s own creation story the Enuma Elish, there’s a tower just like this. Only in that story the tower is built by the gods so they can come down. In this story, Marduk, the chief god, tells humans to build Babylon by making bricks. Here are some quotes:

“Build Babylon, the task you have sought. Let bricks for it be moulded, and raise the shrine!” The Anunnaki wielded the pick. For one year they made the needed bricks.

They raised the peak of Esagil, a replica of the Apsû. They built the lofty temple tower of the Apsû.”

Then:

“Be-l seated the gods, his fathers, at the banquet. In the lofty shrine which they had built for his dwelling, Saying, “This is Babylon, your fixed dwelling, Take your pleasure here! Sit down in joy!”

When they “raise the peak of Esagil,” that’s a word that translates as “the house that raises its head,” it’s a replica of the Apsû — which are those flowing living waters in the Babylonian story. A mountain where the waters of life flow out (that sounds like Eden). They build a lofty temple tower. So the gods come down and party with them in Babylon — their “fixed dwelling,” this lofty tower.

The Babel story turns this on its head.

The Gilgamesh-Nimrod king who wants to be a Nephilim — who wants to make a name for himself — he’s not a grand heavenly player who is godlike; he’s a wannabe. He has this grand unity plan to make himself a god on earth, but things don’t go the way he wants. There’s no divine party. Before they even finish the tower that is meant to bring heaven to earth, God comes down (Genesis 11:5).

He takes one look at this tower project — and there’s an echo of Genesis 3 here — where there he says “they’ll be like one of us” — when they already were, he says if they finish this “nothing they plan will be impossible” (Genesis 11:6). This is another push to be godlike — heavenly humans on earth, but they’re doing it wrong.

They’re trying to build a Garden of Eden — a place where God dwells on earth with His people — rather than receiving that as a gift from God. It’s an attempt to build security and paradise and a name on earthly terms, with baked earth, rather than letting God make His name great through His earthly representatives — images of His heavenly rule — given life by His breath.

So God — just like he does in Genesis chapter 1 — says “Let us” (Genesis 1:26, 11:7). There’s a plural here that could be God talking within the Trinity, or it could be God talking to the divine council — and there’s a reason to think that’s what’s in view here that we’ll see in a minute. Then rather than the humans coming up into heaven, or building a tower that enables God to come down — God comes down to confuse — which is the same word for Babel or Babylon in Hebrew — He Babylons the people, scattering them all over the world, and the city doesn’t even get finished — this heaven on Earth project doesn’t work out; even if Babylon is going to look great, and bricky, and powerful with its garden mountains and lofty temples and big walls — it isn’t Eden. It offers no security.

And this scattering—into nation states around the earth—it’s an act of judgment on these nations (Genesis 11:8-9). We’ve picked up Deuteronomy 32 a couple of times in this series—back when we were talking about the sons of God, where we noticed that there’s a good reason to translate this verse as God setting up the boundaries of the nations according to the numbers not of the sons of Israel, who haven’t been born yet when the nations are scattered in Genesis 10 and 11, but according to the sons of God (Deuteronomy 32:8-9). This act of scattering in Genesis is him disinheriting the nations—giving them to the sons of God, these other heavenly beings in the divine council to be ruled by these powers and principalities—while God keeps his own people, Israel, as his portion—his own inheritance.

There’s a warning here about what’ll happen if God’s upright people—Jeshurun means upright—abandon the God who made them—fathered them—and who saves them—to bow down to these gods—idols, and literally here in bold demons—a word only used twice in the Old Testament—but the nations aren’t condemned for this idolatry here (Deuteronomy 32:15-17). Just Israel, who’re God’s children. The punishment for this people; it’s to be scattered and to have their name erased (Deuteronomy 32:26). It’s exactly what the people in Babel wanted to avoid; and what happens to everyone at Babel.

Reading Deuteronomy this way—picking up a thread from Babel—I reckon, is compelling when you look at how Genesis moves from the people who want to make a name to the line of the son of Noah whose name is Name, the line that now runs all the way to Abram, whose name God is going to make great as he blesses the nations (Genesis 12:1-3). We’ll see more of Abram’s story next week—and there’s another good reason to read Deuteronomy 32, and its commentary on God’s relationship to the nations and to Israel this way that comes a little earlier in Deuteronomy, in chapter 4, where God says all the other nations have been given over to the worship of these other heavenly bodies—the host of heaven, while Israel has been brought out of the furnace of Egypt—like a cast idol statue—a baked people—as God’s inheritance (Deuteronomy 4:19-20). It’s similar to the language Exodus uses when it talks about Israel as a kingdom of priests (Exodus 19:5-6).

God’s people are called out of the scattering that happens when Nimrod builds this temple city of Babylon to make a name for himself; this walled centre of security trying to bring heaven and earth together on human terms. Cities can be like this — centres of human security without God appearing to set the boundaries, which is part of the story for Israel through its history as it comes to have its own cities, and its own walls, and its own heaven on earth spaces—the tabernacle, while they’re living as people without walls; people roaming the earth heading towards a destination—the promised land.

On their journey, we’re often told about the cities in the land as though they’re little Babylons—walled cities full of violent people—led by giant kings—that was what scared the spies who were sent into the promised land (Numbers 13:28). On their journey, we’re told about these big cities, with big walls and giant people—like King Og, or the Anakites, as though these walls offer security against God’s plans (Deuteronomy 3:3-5, 9:1-2), but like Jericho with its famous wall tumbling story—these walls weren’t a barrier to God.

Israel is warned that when they turn to idolatry and get scattered—these same walls, in their cities, won’t protect them either. He’ll bring a nation against them from far away. A nation whose language they won’t understand, who’ll tear down their city walls, and cart them off. They’ll be scattered just like the people in Babel—only they’ll be scattered into Babel itself (Deuteronomy 28:50-52, 64). The seeds for the exile are planted in the Babel story, and in the way the Old Testament picks up these threads.

So this becomes a particularly interesting story for Israel while they’re in exile in Babylon. Nimrod isn’t the only Gilgamesh figure in the Bible. He’s not the only brickman. What he does with his cities and the Babel story in Genesis, king Nebuchadnezzar repeats—and Daniel wants us to see the repeat of the name-making warrior king—a Nimrod—who wants his own version of heaven on Earth; his own Eden.

Babylon’s king Nebuchadnezzar was a mighty warrior king in history who expanded Babylon’s empire—including by taking the southern kingdom of Judah into exile—he might’ve inspired just how popular the Gilgamesh Epic became by being a city-building god-king. He was a famous brickman. Like Nimrod who built with baked bricks and tar, he built walls (Genesis 11:3).

There are stacks of surviving inscriptions like this one about his building projects; where he brags about the strong wall he made with bitumen and baked bricks, building this as high as a mountain. Just like in Gilgamesh. Just like in Babel.

Here’s a translation from some of the inscriptions:

“I built a strong wall that cannot be shaken with bitumen and baked bricks… I laid its foundation on the breast of the netherworld, and I built its top as high as a mountain.

I added to the palace and raised it as high as a mountain with bitumen and baked brick.

I constructed a strong, sixty-cubit spur of land along the Euphrates River and thereby created dry land. With bitumen and baked brick, I secured its foundation on the surface of the netherworld, at the level of the water table, and raised its superstructure.

As for the merciless, evil-doer… I drove away his arrows by reinforcing the wall of Babylon like a mountain. I strengthened the protection of Esagil and established the city of Babylon as a fortress.”

Nebuchadnezzar the Nimrod brags over and over about building brick mountains. Even that he made dry ground on the waters—like Genesis, but also like the tower in Babylon’s creation story—and in Babel—out of bitumen and baked brick. He brags about driving back Babylon’s enemies and protecting the ‘house that rises its head’—establishing Babylon as a fortress.

And every brick laid was Nebuchadnezzar making a name for himself—it’s estimated there were 15 million bricks used in his construction projects—bricks like this one.

Each one was imprinted with his name and a list of his achievements as a temple builder who made tower-mountains that reached the heavens. These braggy inscriptions were on every brick, on every wall, and built into the foundation of every project.

You want to make a name for yourself in Babylon, you be a brick-man. A Nimrod. A Nebuchadnezzar.

Daniel draws a link between Nebuchadnezzar and the Babel story.

He starts off with Israel being brought to the plain of Shinar, and then, over time, has Nebuchadnezzar getting too big for his boots in a ‘head in the heavens’ scene. This time it’s not with bricks but with gold. Nebuchadnezzar, like Nimrod, goes to the plains of Babylon and he builds a giant tower with its head in the heavens (Genesis 11:2-4, Daniel 3:1), only this tower isn’t a ziggurat, it’s a giant image — it uses the same word as Genesis 1 just in Aramaic — it’s a giant golden image of God, representing his rule.

He does this right after Daniel interprets a dream where Nebuchadnezzar’s kingdom was a gold bit of a statue made from different materials; it’s just the head (Daniel 2:38-39). He wakes up and builds the entire ‘man’ of his dreams from gold. He’s claiming his kingdom and name will last forever; that he’s the one who’ll bring heaven and earth together as he unites all people under his rule; people of every language bowing and worshipping on his command (Daniel 3:4-5). What a Nimrod.

Just imagine for a moment reading the Babel story while you’re in Babylon. That’s where the big story of Israel’s history — Genesis to 2 Kings — ends up. Imagine reading about Nimrod while carting around bricks with Nebuchadnezzar’s name on them, building his towers. The book of Daniel is a kind of ‘after the event’ commentary on faithful life in this moment in history, but the Genesis story invites you to see Babylon and its mountainous buildings that are trying to link Babylon to the gods, and its Gilgamesh-like king who is uniting the earth while trying to make his name great with these building projects as a dead end. As a path to disinheritance and being scattered, and being brought down. Nebuchadnezzar is a Nimrod; and so is anyone who tries to unite heaven and earth without God.

But God has a heaven and earth reunion project he’s working on through history (Daniel 2:44), one that centers on a king who brings heaven to earth in a forever kingdom as he lives not for his own name, but for God’s — a son of Abraham — who brings blessing and restoration to all nations.

Another inversion of the Babel story comes with the nations, not just Israel, being not disinherited but re-adopted. That’s the story Paul tells when he visits Athens; a modern-to-his-day Babylon, with amazing walls and lots and lots of idol images (Acts 17:26, 30-31). He looks at these images as attempts to reach heaven, and how God’s plan was to bring all people back to himself, even after they’re given the boundaries of their lands, Deuteronomy 32 style; given over to the powers and principalities and this temple building idolatry. He says something has shifted in the heavens and the earth, where the God who “isn’t served by human hands building stuff out of bricks” has revealed himself through this one man; Jesus, who is now the ruler of the heavens and the earth — and all nations. Jesus the anti-Nimrod, who calls us out of our own building projects and into his.

Those are two threads tied up, but what about the bricks and the temple building? Our “brickman” tendencies to get swept up in the name-building project of our empires? Or even our own name-building, image-making efforts; whether that’s to make a name for ourselves now, in our own spaces, or to be like a Nimrod or a Nebuchadnezzar or a Big Clive, or a Donald, trying to build a kingdom that will last.

Here’s a fun payoff for that thread. Babel was a temple-building project, trying to bring heaven and earth together, which is ultimately God’s plan for the renewal of the heavens and the earth. At the end of the Bible’s story we see the heavenly city descend so humans live with God, and have his name written on us (Revelation 21:1-2, 22:4). There’s a rabbit hole here where the Hebrew word for “brick” is basically “white stone,” and the faithful church gets a white stone with a new name written on it, as we’re called out of Babylon in Revelation (Revelation 2:17).

But we’re not called to be brickmen — Nimrods, Nebuchadnezzars, or Clives — we’re called to be a brick… Man.

We’re not people who use bricks to make a name for ourselves, but bricks swept up and joined together in God’s building project — connected to the living stone — Jesus. Jesus, God’s living image who reveals what life lived for God’s name looks like; the true Israel and the forever king, who calls us to join in his Exodus-styled kingdom of priests—his living temple—as we journey towards this heavenly home (1 Peter 2:4-5).

The idea isn’t to build monuments or monumental lives so our names’ll be remembered like Nebuchadnezzars—but for our lives to be temple-like monuments to him; as we become a living temple, together, proclaiming the name of Jesus because we know that God remembers our names and we are heirs with Jesus who live lives with this as our story. Nebuchadnezzar might’ve built Babylon with 15 million bricks with his name on them; God is building a heavenly temple with billions of living bricks, through history, with his name written on us.

We’re not brick builders trying to bridge heaven and earth on our own terms, but bricks with God’s name stamped on us, showing the world what God’s bridge between heaven on earth looks like as we get swept up in his program to proclaim the name of Jesus. Being part of this building project is the anti-Babel way to invite people to meet the anti-Nimrod king who brings the nations back into relationship with God through his death, resurrection, and the pouring out of God’s Spirit to give us heavenly life here on earth.

January 2, 2024