Ben Thomas
The books of the Old Testament contain narrative threads, recurring themes, repeated word groups, and other literary devices, which enable the reader to identify patterns and compare related material, even in passages that are far apart in the text. When we encounter difficult passages, identifying commonalities across stories limits which interpretations we can accept as reasonable while introducing ideas we might not have considered when reading any one story independently.
Exodus 23—the first instance of God’s direction to the Israelites to occupy Canaan, drive out its inhabitants, and destroy the monuments of the gods in the land—may be understood as part of a literary pattern that begins early in Genesis.
Scholarly Options
Charlie Trimm‘s book The Destruction of the Canaanites documents the spectrum of scholarly approaches to the moral problem posed by Exodus 23 and the difficulties accompanying them.1 He categorizes them according to their treatment of four propositions, which cannot be simultaneously true:
1) God is good and compassionate.
2) The Old Testament is a faithful record of God’s dealings with humanity and favorably portrays YHWH’s actions.
3) The Old Testament describes events similar to genocide.
4) Mass killings are always evil.
For Trimm, scholarly proposals addressing the conflict fall into four corresponding categories:
1) God is not good.
2) The Old Testament is not a faithful record.
3) The Old Testament does not describe a genocide.
4) The mass killing of the Canaanites was permitted at that one point in history.
Believers who view the recorded events as historical and God as good, truthful, and omniscient are left with few satisfying options. A literary pattern in judgment narratives provides context and may assist us in interpreting God’s instructions in Exodus 23 and subsequent commands to occupy the land of Canaan.
Examining Exodus 23
In Exodus 23,2 God tells Israel:
- I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries.
- My angel will go before you and bring you in to the land of the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hivites and the Jebusites; and I will completely destroy them.
- You shall not worship their gods . . . but you shall utterly overthrow them and break their sacred pillars in pieces.
- I will send My terror ahead of you, and throw into confusion all the people among whom you come, and I will make all your enemies turn their backs to you.
- I will send hornets ahead of you so that they will drive out the Hivites, the Canaanites, and the Hittites before you.
- I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand, and you will drive them out before you.
- They shall not live in your land. . . .
Many commentators have noted the tendency of ancient Near East battle accounts to use hyperbole, claiming total destruction of a people against whom they later fought or with whom they made future treaties. Some biblical warfare accounts also appear to do this,3 so hyperbole may take the razor’s edge off the harshness of God’s Exodus 23 statements. However, we must acknowledge that here and in following passages, God tells the Israelites to invade Canaan and kill or exile its people.
The Beginning
In Genesis 1–2—having created plants, fruit-bearing trees, and animals of the sky, water, and land—God establishes a paradigm for life in the land he has made:
“Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Gen 1:26–28)
By the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made. (Gen 2:2–3)
In following narratives, people depart from this standard in ways that imperil God’s purpose to walk with his people in a fruitful land.4 God responds to these threats with a repeating series of actions.
A Pattern of Judgment
Beginning in Genesis 3, God:5
1) sees the pollution of sin and/or hears cries of oppressed people,
2) comes down,
3) assesses thorough corruption,
4) explains his actions,
5) is present in judgment,
6) imposes exile and/or death,
7) preserves a remnant, and
8) gives the remnant new responsibilities, which often relate to the sin that preceded the judgment.6
Not every element is obvious in every iteration, yet there is a discernible consistency in God’s response across the stories of the fall, Cain’s murder of Abel, the flood, Babel, Sodom, and the plagues/signs against Egypt. One instance might be explained away, but consistent action across generations suggests we are observing something of the character and purposes of God, one who sees and intervenes to deliver a remnant from pervasive evil and restore his people in a life-giving land.
If we begin reading in Genesis 1, then by the time we reach Exodus 23, we have encountered at least six judgment narratives with this substantially similar series of events. God’s command to invade Canaan plays out over the books of Exodus–Joshua, so in this specific iteration, the series is not as clear as in more compact narratives.
Key elements appear as early as Genesis 15:13–16, where God tells Abram his descendants will be enslaved, God will judge the nation they serve, and in the fourth generation they will return, “for the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete” (v. 16). In light of the other relevant judgment narratives—in which God assesses the thorough corruption of people in the land—interpreting the complete iniquity of the Amorites as thorough corruption during the generation in which Israel returns to Canaan appears a reasonable approach.
Deuteronomy 18 details practices of the peoples in the land that are unacceptable to God and cites them as the reason God is driving them out. Psalm 106:35–38 also describes the practices of the peoples of the land in language reminiscent of earlier judgment stories. During and after the conquest, the Israelites often failed to be faithful to God and instead:
. . . mingled with the nations
And learned their practices,
And served their idols,
Which became a snare to them.
They even sacrificed their sons and their daughters to the demons,
And shed innocent blood,
The blood of their sons and their daughters,
Whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan;
And the land was polluted with the blood.
In contrast to some of the scholarly approaches Trimm cites, this pattern undermines the idea that God’s orders regarding the Israelite occupation of Canaan are limited in scope or only affect military targets. There were no such restrictions in the flood, the exile of Babel, Sodom’s destruction, or the plagues on Egypt.
Observing the Pattern
1) God sees corruption and/or hears the cries of the oppressed.
| Reference | Story | God Sees and Hears |
| Genesis 3 | Fall | They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. Then the Lord God called to the man . . . . (vv. 8–9)7 |
| Genesis 4 | Cain | “The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to Me from the ground.” (v. 10) |
| Genesis 6 | Flood | Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. (v. 5) |
| Genesis 11 | Babel | They said, “Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name, otherwise we will be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.”8 The Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. (vv. 4–5) |
| Genesis 18 | Sodom | The Lord said, “The outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah is indeed great, and their sin is exceedingly grave.” (v. 20) |
| Exodus 3 | Egypt Plagues | The Lord said, “I have surely seen the affliction of My people who are in Egypt, and have given heed to their cry because of their taskmasters, for I am aware of their sufferings.” (v. 7) |
| Genesis 15; Exodus 23 | Conquest | [There may not be a seeing or hearing passage regarding the Canaanites, yet God’s Genesis 15 conversation with Abram tells us he is aware of events in the land that he is promising as an inheritance.] |
2) When God sees and hears, he moves to investigate.
| Reference | Story | God Comes Down |
| Genesis 3 | Fall | They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day . . . . The Lord God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?” . . . “Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” . . . “What is this you have done?” (vv. 8–9, 11, 13) |
| Genesis 4 | Cain | [God is apparently present and speaks directly with Cain] “Where is Abel your brother?” (v. 9) |
| Genesis 6 | Flood | God looked on the earth, and behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth. (v. 12) |
| Genesis 11 | Babel | The Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. (v. 5) |
| Genesis 18 | Sodom | “I will go down now, and see if they have done entirely according to its outcry, which has come to Me . . . .” (v. 21) |
| Exodus 3 | Egypt Plagues | “I have surely seen the affliction of My people who are in Egypt, and have given heed to their cry because of their taskmasters, for I am aware of their sufferings. So I have come down to deliver them from the power of the Egyptians. . . .” (vv. 7–8) |
| Genesis 15; Exodus 23 | Conquest | [Genesis 15 reveals God is observing and has already determined the iniquity of the Amorites will be complete at a future time.] |
3) When God comes down, he assesses whether there is sin significant enough to require a response. In later narratives, this involves the thorough corruption of the people in the land.
| Reference | Story | God Assesses |
| Genesis 3 | Fall | The Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil . . . .” (v. 22) |
| Genesis 4 | Cain | “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to Me from the ground . . . .” (v. 10) |
| Genesis 6 | Flood | The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. The Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. (vv. 5–6) |
| Genesis 11 | Babel | “Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. And this is what they began to do, and now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them.” (v. 6) |
| Genesis 18–19 | Sodom | “I will not destroy it on account of the ten.” (18:32) “. . . their outcry has become so great before the Lord that the Lord has sent us to destroy it.” (19:13) |
| Exodus 3 | Egypt Plagues | “I have seen the oppression with which the Egyptians are oppressing them.” (v. 9) |
| Deuteronomy 18 | Conquest | “. . . you shall not learn to imitate the detestable things of those nations. There must never be found among you anyone who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, anyone who practices divination, an omen reader, a soothsayer, a sorcerer, one who casts spells, one who conjures up spirits, a practitioner of the occult, or a necromancer . . . . [B]ecause of these detestable things the Lord your God is about to drive them out from before you.” (Deut 18:9–12) |
4) When God determines judgment is necessary, he tells us what he will do and why.
| Reference | Story | God Explains His Actions |
| Genesis 3 | Fall | “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”—therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken. (vv. 23–24) |
| Genesis 4 | Cain | “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to Me from the ground. Now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. When you cultivate the ground, it will no longer yield its strength to you; you will be a vagrant and a wanderer on the earth.” (vv. 10–12) |
| Genesis 6 | Flood | “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, because he also is flesh; nevertheless his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.” . . . Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. The Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. The Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky; for I am sorry that I have made them.” (vv. 3, 5–7) |
| Genesis 11 | Babel | “Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. And this is what they began to do, and now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them. Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.” So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of the whole earth. . . . (vv. 6–8) |
| Genesis 18–19 | Sodom | “The outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah is indeed great, and their sin is exceedingly grave. I will go down now, and see if they have done entirely according to its outcry, which has come to Me; and if not, I will know.” (18:20–21) “If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare the whole place on their account.” (18:26) “I will not destroy it on account of the ten.” (18:32) “. . . we are about to destroy this place, because their outcry has become so great before the Lord that the Lord has sent us to destroy it.” (19:13) |
| Exodus 3 | Egypt Plagues | “I have surely seen the affliction of My people who are in Egypt, and have given heed to their cry because of their taskmasters, for I am aware of their sufferings. So I have come down to deliver them from the power of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and spacious land. . . . [B]ehold, the cry of the sons of Israel has come to Me; furthermore, I have seen the oppression with which the Egyptians are oppressing them.” (vv. 7–9) |
| Exodus 23 | Conquest | “My angel will go before you and bring you in to the land of the Amorites . . . and I will completely destroy them. You shall not worship their gods, nor serve them, nor do according to their deeds; but you shall utterly overthrow them and break their sacred pillars in pieces. But you shall serve the Lord your God. . . . I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand, and you will drive them out before you. You shall make no covenant with them or with their gods. They shall not live in your land, because they will make you sin against Me; for if you serve their gods, it will surely be a snare to you.” (vv. 23–25, 31–33) |
5) God does not merely pronounce judgment; he is present in it. Even when he sends a proxy, the biblical language blurs the distinction between God and the proxy.
| Reference | Story | God Is Present in Judgment |
| Genesis 3 | Fall | . . . the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken. So He drove the man out; and at the east of the garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword which turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life. (vv. 23–24) |
| Genesis 4 | Cain | “Now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. When you cultivate the ground, it will no longer yield its strength to you; you will be a vagrant and a wanderer on the earth.” . . . Then Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden. (vv. 11–12, 16) |
| Genesis 7 | Flood | . . . the Lord closed [the door of the ark] behind Noah. . . . He blotted out every living thing that was upon the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky. . . . (vv. 16, 23) |
| Genesis 11 | Babel | “Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.” So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of the whole earth. . . . (vv. 7–8) |
| Genesis 19 | Sodom | Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven, and He overthrew those cities. . . . (vv. 24–25) |
| Exodus 12; 14 | Egypt Plagues | Now it came about at midnight that the Lord struck all the firstborn in the land of Egypt. . . . (12:29) . . . the Lord overthrew the Egyptians in the midst of the sea. (14:27) |
| Exodus 23 | Conquest | “My angel will go before you and bring you in to the land of the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hivites and the Jebusites; and I will completely destroy them.” (v. 23) |
6) In Genesis 1, God’s plan for people is that they be fruitful and multiply, fill the land, and subdue it. In direct contrast, God’s judgment takes the form of exile or death.
| Reference | Story | Judgment as Exile and/or Death |
| Genesis 3 | Fall | . . . the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken. So He drove the man out; and at the east of the garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword which turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life. (vv. 23–24) |
| Genesis 4 | Cain | “Now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. When you cultivate the ground, it will no longer yield its strength to you; you will be a vagrant and a wanderer on the earth.” (vv. 11–12) |
| Genesis 6–7 | Flood | The Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky; for I am sorry that I have made them.” (6:7) “The end of all flesh has come before Me; for the earth is filled with violence because of them; and behold, I am about to destroy them with the earth.” (6:13) All flesh that moved on the earth perished, birds and cattle and beasts and every swarming thing that swarms upon the earth, and all mankind; of all that was on the dry land, all in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life, died. Thus He blotted out every living thing that was upon the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky, and they were blotted out from the earth. (7:21–23) |
| Genesis 11 | Babel | So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of the whole earth. . . . (v. 8) |
| Genesis 19 | Sodom | Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven, and He overthrew those cities, and all the valley, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground. (vv. 24–25) |
| Exodus 12; 14 | Egypt Plagues | Now it came about at midnight that the Lord struck all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of cattle. Pharaoh arose in the night, he and all his servants and all the Egyptians, and there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was no home where there was not someone dead. (12:29–30) . . . the sea returned to its normal state at daybreak, while the Egyptians were fleeing right into it; then the Lord overthrew the Egyptians in the midst of the sea. The waters returned and covered the chariots and the horsemen, even Pharaoh’s entire army that had gone into the sea after them; not even one of them remained. (14:27–28) |
| Exodus 23 | Conquest | “My angel will go before you and bring you in to the land of the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hivites and the Jebusites; and I will completely destroy them. . . . I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand, and you will drive them out before you.” (vv. 23, 31) |
7) God ensures that a remnant survives, often to return to a fruitful land and walk there with him.
| Reference | Story | God Preserves a Remnant |
| Genesis 3 | Fall | . . . the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken. (v. 23) |
| Genesis 4 | Cain | Then Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden. . . . Adam had relations with his wife again; and she gave birth to a son, and named him Seth, for, she said, “God has appointed me another offspring in place of Abel, for Cain killed him.” (vv. 16, 25) |
| Genesis 8 | Flood | Noah went out, and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives with him. Every beast, every creeping thing, and every bird, everything that moves on the earth, went out by their families from the ark. (vv. 18–19) |
| Genesis 11-12 | Babel | So the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of the whole earth. . . . (11:8) Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go forth from your country, and from your relatives and from your father’s house, to the land which I will show you. . . .” (12:1) |
| Genesis 19 | Sodom | Thus it came about, when God destroyed the cities of the valley, that God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when He overthrew the cities in which Lot lived. (v. 29) |
| Exodus 3; 12–13 | Egypt Plagues | “I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt to the land of the Canaanite . . . to a land flowing with milk and honey.” (3:17) “. . . on this very day I brought your hosts out of the land of Egypt. . . .” (12:17) “Remember this day in which you went out from Egypt, from the house of slavery; for by a powerful hand the Lord brought you out from this place.” (13:3) |
| Exodus 23 | Conquest | “I will drive them out before you little by little, until you become fruitful and take possession of the land. I will fix your boundary from the Red Sea to the sea of the Philistines, and from the wilderness to the River Euphrates. . . .” (vv. 30–31) |
8) God gives the remnant new responsibilities corresponding to the failures that led to judgment. In later passages, the new responsibility is an element of a covenant between God and people.
| Reference | Story | God Gives the Remnant New Responsibilities |
| Genesis 1 | Creation | God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (vv. 27–28) |
| Genesis 3 | Fall | To the woman He said, “I will greatly multiply Your pain in childbirth, In pain you will bring forth children; Yet your desire will be for your husband, And he will rule over you.” Then to Adam He said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’; Cursed is the ground because of you; In toil you will eat of it All the days of your life. “Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; And you will eat the plants of the field; By the sweat of your face You will eat bread, Till you return to the ground, Because from it you were taken; For you are dust, And to dust you shall return.” (vv. 16–19) |
| Genesis 4 | Cain | [Although God protects Cain, the murderer, from retribution, it is not until the Noahic covenant that people are given related responsibility. Seth becomes the remnant after Abel dies and Cain is exiled.] |
| Genesis 9 | Flood | [Noahic covenant] “Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God He made man. As for you, be fruitful and multiply; populate the earth abundantly and multiply in it.” (vv. 6–7) |
| Genesis 11–12 | Babel | [Following Babel, God selects Abraham from among the nations to begin a new nation in the land of Canaan, and God makes a covenant with Abraham, leads him, and holds him accountable.]9 |
| Genesis 12; 15; 18–19; 21 | Sodom | [Lot and his daughters, the survivors of Sodom, produce Moab and Ammon, two nations that neighbor Israel for much of the Old Testament. “God remembered Abraham” (19:29) during the destruction of Sodom and shortly afterward begins to fulfill the Abrahamic covenant with the birth of Isaac.] |
| Exodus 3; 12; 20–23; Leviticus | Egypt Plagues | [Mosaic covenant, with ceremonies and laws establishing God’s relationship with the Israelites] |
| Exodus 23; Deuteronomy 10–30 | Conquest | [Mosaic covenant, with laws for living in the land] |
What Can We Learn?
In Genesis 1–2, God commands his people to be fruitful, multiply, fill the land, and freely eat of all the trees except the one that brings death. Though God desired humans’ life and fruitfulness in the land, he pronounces exile and death because he will not tolerate their continued access to the tree of life once they have eaten of the knowledge of good and evil.
From Eden to the conquest of Canaan, we find at least seven judgment accounts in which God displays a similar pattern of action. When people act corruptly, God deals with the resulting consequences. He does not impose his ideal—to walk with his people in a fruitful land—but the pattern suggests that thorough corruption that threatens his relationship with humans moves him to action. He responds to pervasive sin with death and exile in order to reclaim people and land, to return a remnant to the land and dwell with them there.
Ben Thomas (B.A., Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music; M.S., Southern Methodist University) has written software, served as an infantry soldier in the US Army and a Special Agent in US Secret Service, worked in corporate security and investigations, and currently is an information security analyst. You can find his work on Twitter (@kalevcreative) and at kalevcreative.com.
Image: Benlin Alexander, The Conquest of Canaan
- Charlie Trimm, The Destruction of the Canaanites: God, Genocide, and Biblical Interpretation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2022), 66–67. Roger Olson has written a blog post doing similar work, though it is obviously less detailed: Roger E. Olson, “Every Known Theistic Approach to Old Testament ‘Texts of Terror,’” My Evangelical Arminian Theological Musings, July 15, 2013, https://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2013/07/every-known-theistic-approach-to-old-testament-texts-of-terror/.[↩]
- All Bible quotations from the New American Standard Bible.[↩]
- E. g., Joshua 21:43–45’s claim that the Israelites conquered all the land vs. Joshua 23:4–5’s assessment that the occupation is not yet complete.[↩]
- On the motif of God and his people walking together, see Genesis 3:8; 5:22–24; 6:9; 17:1; 24:40; 48:15; Leviticus 26:12.[↩]
- In his book Portraying Violence in the Hebrew Bible, Matt Lynch identifies a similar series of steps: “As in other biblical texts, Yhwh investigates before enacting judgement. The verbal sequence of hearing ➔ going down ➔ seeing/investigating fits squarely within a judicial conception of violence, wherein the victim’s outcry places a responsibility upon the just to deliver, but also requires a judicial investigation to determine guilt.” Matthew J. Lynch, Portraying Violence in the Hebrew Bible (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 154–55.[↩]
- I would like to thank Charlie Trimm for sharing the idea of new responsibilities in personal correspondence.[↩]
- While God is present to discover the corruption in his garden, in the narrative of Genesis 3, the emphasis is on the woman seeing that the fruit was good—though God had said they should not eat it—set in opposition to God seeing that his creation was “good”/“very good” seven times in Genesis 1.[↩]
- These goals are opposite those God gave in Genesis 1. “God created man in His own image” : “let us make for ourselves a name” | “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it” : “Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven . . . otherwise we will be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.” In the stories of Cain, Lamech, the Nephilim, and Nimrod, building cities and making a name for oneself are linked to violent oppression, in Nimrod’s case by association with Babylon and Assyria. The people’s stated intent suggests a desire to return to the pre-Flood paradigm, further strengthened if one accepts the “sons of God” in Genesis 6 as heavenly beings and the tower as an attempt to reach them.[↩]
- cf. Deuteronomy 32:8–9[↩]