Genesis 11:3 Commentary and Bible Study

‘Go to’ – what an interesting phrase! There is leadership here, someone is in charge, there is organisation, and it is organisation contrary to what they know God has commanded. It comes from Nimrod. So Nimrod is not only a rebel himself, but he is trying to organise the whole of mankind to rebel with him. He is a type of all those who try to impose their will on others to bring about some evil purpose. A command has been given – you will go and do this. Here are supposed to be a collection of families, and they are all supposed to have their own homesteads. God has not appointed a prime minister, or president, or anything of that kind. The world should still be a theocracy, looking to God for how to structure their society, but already somebody has made themselves the boss; someone has taken over. It is Nimrod of course. It is the bully, the tyrant, the hunter of men, the oppressor, the extortioner.‘And they said one to another’ – there was a chain of command here, and captains, ‘Go to.’ Now, they had invented brick-making as there is evidently no stone in that area. They had used stone, so the narrative implies, in previous generations where they had been, but not any longer. ‘Let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly [bake them]. And they had brick for stone.’ They had learned how to make bricks. That was a tremendous advance. Out of great boulders, they could fashion stone blocks. But that was, in those days, much more limiting. To build something like a huge tower, brick is much easier, especially in those days. ‘And slime had they for mortar.’ That was very effective at sticking the bricks together. It was better than the 19th century mortar. When the bombs fell on London, the buildings just flew apart because before Portland cement the mortar did little more than hold the bricks apart. But they had a much stickier substance way back in the Book of Genesis.