The city in the preface
An exercise in thinking symbolically
And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them.
And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified.
— Revelation 11
…And there followed another angel, saying,
Babylon is fallen,
is fallen,
that great city
— Revelation 18
…And I John saw the holy city,
new Jerusalem, coming down
— Revelation 22
How did we get here? What is the great city, what makes it great? Or the holy city, and what makes it holy? All of a sudden it’s the finale and God’s inspired Word is concluding and it never made sense in the first place and now we’re expected to understand Jerusalem where Christ was crucified is symbolically, pneumatikously,1 Sodom and Egypt. But the great city was always Babylon and it still is. How did we get here?
How did John get here?
I don’t know. I ain’t here to explain John’s Apocalypse to you. If someone says they’re about to do that for you, go ahead and read something else. You’ll be better off.
But I do know John was an avid student of God’s Word. He lived and breathed what we call the Old Testament, and he touched and spoke with and sweated alongside and loved the Word that we call Jesus, the one that John said would take more paper in the world than exists to write down what he did.
I don’t know what was going through John’s head, but I can imitate his method. Minus the visions and the standing in the throne room of God, I guess. That’ll have to wait.
But what better place to start exploring what the Bible says about the city than the preface, the first eleven chapters of Genesis?2
And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him. Then the LORD said to Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?” He said, “I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?” And the LORD said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground. And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. When you work the ground, it shall no longer yield to you its strength. You shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth.” Cain said to the LORD, “My punishment is greater than I can bear. Behold, you have driven me today away from the ground, and from your face I shall be hidden. I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.” Then the LORD said to him, “Not so! If anyone kills Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold.” And the LORD put a mark on Cain, lest any who found him should attack him. Then Cain went away from the presence of the LORD and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden.
Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch. When he built a city, he called the name of the city after the name of his son, Enoch.
Genesis 4:8-14, ESV
The more I read the biblical text, the more convinced I am that there is never a word to spare. God and the biblical authors didn’t mince words and neither did they waste them. Details are never superfluous or merely the product of historical revision—if that makes me a fundamentalist (it doesn’t), so be it.
The scriptural theme of the city begins in the days of man’s first exile from the Garden. Adam has already been informed that the work he was built for is harder in a world marred by sin, that thorns and thistles would tear his flesh as he worked, that he would eat in pain.3 God isn’t just repeating himself to Cain, for now the ground is stained with blood. The world is another step further from the Garden it once was.
And from this point forward, man will seek sources of sustenance other than what he was created for. Other than working the ground and walking with God.
Yet, as this passage makes clear, even now God offers protection beyond what man deserves. Marked for justice was Cain, a kind of justice we can’t fathom.
Of course, Cain wasn’t satisfied with God’s protection and I can’t say I really live any differently myself. I try to. Step one is admitting the problem, but that’s hard to do in a world that thinks it’s moved beyond what we were built for, a world that’s still reaching for divinity in the same old ways it always has.
The first fall was reaching for the knowledge of the gods. The second and third are yet to come in the days of Cain, but he’s already steering humanity towards them.4 Cain is cast from God’s presence into the Land of Nod: the Land of Wandering. Cain is experiencing the human condition: perpetual homelessness. This he attempts to resolve by settling in the Land of Wandering. Oxymoronic.
But what choice did he have? The land would not yield its strength to him, so he needed a different kind of strength and he would not turn to God for it. The everlasting has been stripped from him of his own accord, so he turns to the next best thing: his son, Enoch. Enoch whose name means to dedicate, inaugurate, or initiate. Perhaps only God can create, but at least man can dedicate.
Enoch will last after Cain is gone. The city or the son, it makes no difference. Men have always been willing to sacrifice one for the other. We need something we can make and say, we made this. We are as gods.
But this too is vanity. Cities fall, bloodlines end. Just like Abel’s, the righteous line we prematurely tossed aside for divine favor.5
Cursed before the LORD be the man who rises up and rebuilds this city, Jericho.
At the cost of his firstborn shall he
lay its foundation,
and at the cost of his youngest son
shall he set up its gates.
— Joshua 6 & 1 Kings 16:34
But before cities can be rebuilt, they must be founded, constructed. Not planted, for they are not alive like the body of Christ, but built. Let us turn to the next cities mentioned in the Bible: the first empire, the first kingdom.
Cush fathered Nimrod; he was the first on earth to be a mighty man. He was a mighty hunter before the LORD. Therefore it is said, “Like Nimrod a mighty hunter before the LORD.” The beginning of his kingdom was Babel, Erech, Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. From that land he went into Assyria and built Nineveh, Rehoboth-Ir, Calah, and Resen between Nineveh and Calah; that is the great city.
Genesis 10:8-12, ESV
To us, the name Nimrod means either mighty hunter or nincompoop thanks to King James, Robert E. Lee, and Looney Tunes,6 but to the ancient Hebrew it meant the one who rebels. Nimrod was the first builder of empire, though he was never out of God’s sight. For our ancient Hebrew, the origin of the empire of Shinar, Babylonia, is not Babylon the great gate of the gods but Babel the place of confusion.
In the biblical story, Assyria prefigures the mighty Babylon and Rome reflects it. They were great. So are the powers of today. But they are always Babylon.
Before we continue, though, we must consider something odd. The first great city in the Bible is not Babel but Resen.7 Resen whose name means bit, bridle, or halter—a city of technological innovation, of domination and the bending of God’s world to our will. We catch a glimpse here into what would make the later Babylon great, as well as Rome and second-Rome and all those who have since claimed and lost the title of third-and-final Rome.
But we’re in the preface, and they aren’t here yet. Let’s turn to the final page of the first chapter of the story of how we got here and who we are:
Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.” And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. And the LORD said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.” So the LORD dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth. And from there the LORD dispersed them over the face of all the earth.
Genesis 11:1-9, ESV
We reached for the heavens, and apparently we got pretty close. Let us become worthy of a divine name, says homo sapiens, the self-proclaimed wise man.
Progress is fine, I suppose, but we’ve never been satisfied with it have we? We had to concretize it, memorialize it. We’ve still got the same itch for progress we had then. God might have given us one task, an Edenic commission, but our ancestors have given us another: the task of Babel, the Babylonian commission.
I’m mixing the words up, but so does the Bible.8 We have to think not just scholastically, but pneumatikously.
God does offer theosis, but to accept that gift would mean relying on him and losing what is perishable.9 We lose it anyway, actually, but humanity is on the cusp of once again thinking it can live forever.
Who am I to say. I know nothing.
But maybe the Bible has already presented a cohesive meaning of the city, ever the object of our lusts.10 And maybe it’s both more nuanced and harshly disconcerting than we’re ready to hear. And maybe we’re just late to the party. Late to our own funeral.
Cast thy keys O Rome into the deep down falling, even to eternity down falling,
And weep.
…Empire is no more! and now the lion & wolf shall cease.
— William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Cf. 1 Corinthians 2:14.
I first heard this section referred to in this way by Marty Solomon of the BEMA podcast and I like the demarcation, although I’m opposed to attempts by some to draw an imaginary line between chapters 11 and 12 in terms of historical accuracy.
Genesis 3:17-19.
Genesis 6:1-5 & 11:1-9.
Matthew 23:35.
I have no idea if that’s actually true, but here’s a Wikipedia article to kick off your etymological research. Anecdotally, I definitely learned the word from Looney Tunes before I got around to reading it in Genesis.
The Hebrew is difficult here according to folks who know more than me, and some translations opt for Calah as the great city. I’ll leave you to read some commentaries and draw your own conclusions.
The biblical city of Babel is the future city of Babylon. Some scholars even suggest that Babel should be translated as Babylon in these first chapters of Genesis (e.g. T. Desmond Alexander in The City of God and the Goal of Creation, pg 26. Crossway, 2018).
Cf. John 12:24-26, 1 Corinthians 15:31-58.
Cf. Revelation 14:8, 18:2-3.
A thought-provoking piece, Wayne, although my knowledge of the Old Testament prevents me from adding anything profound. One thing that came to mind though—and I apologise if it's just too silly to be of use—is that the sequence of the cities sounds a lot like the three little pigs. Enoch's city corresponds to the house of straw—he walked with God then walked no more, as if the wind blew him away. The city of Resen corresponds to the house of sticks—it was bent and fashioned into shape, and was called great because it resembled the work of a skilled craftsman. Babel corresponds to the house of bricks—because it was made of bricks fired in the furnace and could bear the weight needed to build a tower. I guess the difference is that the third little pig was a hero, whereas the builders of Babel dispersed in animosity.