Genesis 11:1-9: His Kingdom, Not Ours

Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.

They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”

But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”

So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth. - Genesis 11:1-9

 "...so that we may make a name for ourselves otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth" Babel was about empire building, the concetration of human power and potential in order to gain dominion over the world. The people decided to do this "so that we make But domnion was never meant to happen apart from God. According to these verses, the purpose for this tower was to maintain this power--this ability to do things and shape the world and there was a fear that if they they "were scattered over the face of the while early" they would lost this strength. God recognized this when he said, "nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them." It seems that they not only shared a language, but a similarity of understanding the world. 

The building of the city that reached into the sky required a division betweent the rich and the poor, some at the top making decisions and some at the bottom making bricks, just like when the people of Israel were in Egypt. That is, in this society without God and with clarity of purpose, there were unparalleled means to (a) do great things and (b) oppress systematically.

But one morning, they woke up and they couldn't understand each other. Language was broken. Mis-understanding reigned. This common language, common purpose, common identity and common understanding was gone. Some subset of the peole had a new language, purpose, identity and understanding. And they found it easier to live apart. 

Dominion without God wasn't a good thing. When God started bringing things back together in the book of Acts, the Holy Spirit reversed what happened at Babel. The Spirit changed diversity of language from a disadvangage to an adantage. Rather than removing language to prevent misunderstanding, God expanded understanding to encompass the variety of languages within his kingdom. God wants his kingdom to be built, not ours. When we fall into the trap of building our kingdom, then language reverts to its divisive, separating role. But when we build God's kingdom, the diversity of language, understanding and perspectives can be uniting and empowering.