The River of Slime

 

“And they said one to another, 

Go to, let us make brick, 

and burn them throughly. 

And they had brick for stone, 

and slime had they for morter.”

Wesley's Notes for Genesis 11:4

11:2 And they found a plain in the land of Shinar - A spacious plain, able to contain them all.

11:3 Go to, let us make brick, let us build us a city - The country being a plain, yielded neither stone nor morter, yet that did not discourage them, but they made brick to serve instead of stone, and slime, or pitch, instead of morter. Some think they intended hereby to secure themselves against the waters of another flood, but if they had, they would have chosen to build upon a mountain rather than upon a plain. But two things it seems they aimed at in building. To make them a name: they would do something to be talked of by posterity. But they could not gain this point; for we do not find in any history the name of so much as one of these Babel - builders. 

Philo Judeus saith they engraved every one his name upon a brick; yet neither did that serve their purpose. They did it to prevent their dispersion; lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the earth - It was done (saith Josephus) in disobedience to that command, #Gen 9:1|, replenish the earth. God orders them to scatter. No, say they, we will live and die together. In order hereunto they engage themselves and one another in this vast undertaking. That they might unite in one glorious empire, they resolve to build this city and tower, to be the metropolis of their kingdom, and the center of their unity.

11:5 And the Lord came down to see the city - 'Tis an expression after the manner of men, he knew it as clearly as men know that which they come upon the place to view. And the tower which the children of men builded - Which speaks, Their weakness and frailty, it was a foolish thing for the children of men, worms of the earth, to defy heaven. Their sinfulness, they were the sons of Adam, so it is in the Hebrew; nay, of that Adam, that sinful disobedient Adam, whose children are by nature children of disobedience. Their distinction from the children of God, from whom those daring builders had separated themselves, and built this tower to support and perpetuate the separation.

11:6 And the Lord said, Behold the people is one, and they have all one language - And if they continue one, much of the earth will be left uninhabited, and these children of men, if thus incorporated, will swallow up the little remnant of God's children, therefore it is decreed they must not be one. And now nothing will be restrained from them - And this is a reason why they must be crossed, in their design.