I Can't Hear You Through All the Babel

Genesis 11:1-9, New Living Translation (NLT)

The Tower of Babel
11 At one time all the people of the world spoke the same language and used the same words. 2 As the people migrated to the east, they found a plain in the land of Babylonia[a] and settled there.

3 They began saying to each other, “Let’s make bricks and harden them with fire.” (In this region bricks were used instead of stone, and tar was used for mortar.) 4 Then they said, “Come, let’s build a great city for ourselves with a tower that reaches into the sky. This will make us famous and keep us from being scattered all over the world.”

5 But the Lord came down to look at the city and the tower the people were building. 6 “Look!” he said. “The people are united, and they all speak the same language. After this, nothing they set out to do will be impossible for them! 7 Come, let’s go down and confuse the people with different languages. Then they won’t be able to understand each other.”

8 In that way, the Lord scattered them all over the world, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why the city was called Babel,[b] because that is where the Lord confused the people with different languages. In this way he scattered them all over the world.

Footnotes:

11:2 Hebrew Shinar.
11:9 Or Babylon. Babel sounds like a Hebrew term that means “confusion.”

There is some real interesting exegetical work on this text. The way the verses are symmetrical to each other, with the second part reflecting the first, amazes me. 
A “The whole earth had one language” (v1)
     B “there” (v2)
          C “each other” (v3)
               D “Come let us make bricks” (v3)
                    E “let us build for ourselves” (v4)
                         F “a city and tower”
                              G “the Lord came down” (v5) 
                         F 1 “the city and the tower”  
                    E 1 “which mankind had built”  
               D 1 “come… let us mix up” (v7) 
          C 1 “each other’s language”  
     B 1 “from there” (v8)  
A 1 “the language of the whole earth” (v9)

It seems, after reading earlier chapters, that this one is another perspective of some of the same. Rather than a specific event, the language tends to encompass all humanity, our ways as humans. We are given gifts and we use them, often forgetting the purpose for them. So soon we find ourselves (no different than the Garden of Eden) reaching higher and higher to outsmart God. Before we know it, God reminds us of our failures and self-centered motives, making the adjustments needed to keep us on task.  This can easily result in each of us spreading further from our Creator and one another. 

But it doesn't need to be that way. We can use our gifts as God calls us to, never feeling as though we need to surpass the boundaries we are given. Then, in so many ways, we become a blessing to our Creator and our own communities.  But are we willing to be satisfied with that outcome and no more? Let's hope so.