Genesis 11:2 Commentary and Bible Study

Mankind began their journey from where the ark settled on Ararat. Based on Genesis 10:25, the earth was divided due to God’s judgment on Babel during the life of Peleg, which lasted from 101 to 340 years after the flood. His name prophetically predicted this event, but when during his life it occurred, Scripture does not say. Mankind journeyed ‘from the east’ or better ‘in the east’. From Ararat they would have come down in a south-easterly direction to south Mesopotamia, where the land of Shinar was and where there is the land between the two rivers, Tigris and Euphrates. Here was a great fertile plain and they settled there, in disobedience to God who had told them to spread out and replenish the earth after the flood. This command had been very clearly given to Noah as recorded in Genesis 9:1: ‘God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth.’ That command comes all the way down from the Garden of Eden, and it is repeated after the flood to Noah and his family. They are to be fruitful, to multiply and replenish the earth – which means to spread through the earth. The old exegetes, commentators and writers, always used to say that, although it is not declared here, it looks very much as though God revealed that the people would go to the different parts of the earth, and where they should go. This was the view of Matthew Henry and many of the old Bible dictionaries. Perhaps God did this through Eber, or perhaps years before through Shem. But the people did not want to go; they would not listen to the representative of the godly line. They disobeyed the general command of God, and they got as far as the plain of Shinar, in old Babylonia, and there they stopped, and they would not disperse any further. So God had to do something that would force them to disperse, and what he forced them to do was along the lines of what they should have done anyway – a very orderly dispersion by tribes. This city which they are about to build in the plain of Shinar is said in chapter 10 to be part of Nimrod’s kingdom, so he was the prime mover in this act of rebellion, so he has a very apt name. There are not many of them, so how can he be a mighty one in the earth with something under forty thousand people in the total population? Certainly, he can be. ‘I am the one’ – that was his attitude as he grew up – obviously a strapping strong individual with a violent spirit, wished to be an oppressor and a bully.