BIBLE PAINTINGS
Bible Study Resource
The Tower of Babel
Artworks by Pieter Brueghel, Lucas van Valckenborch, the Bedford Master, Meister der Welchenchronik, Thunderfall and Joel Stoehr
The story of the Tower of Babel is really a continuation of the Fall in Genesis 3.
Once again, the Bible describes people who had great confidence in their own ability – too much, as it happened. They overstepped the limit, and God pulled them back into line.
The Tower of Babel, Pieter Brueghel the Elder
Detail of Brueghel's 'Tower of Babel' with medieval military building techniques used to construct fortresses and castles; notice the enormous pulley system for lifting large blocks of stone (upper center)
The people who built the Tower were going to make a name for themselves, impress all the cities around them. And they would do it on their own, without God’s help. They believed they were shapers of their own destiny; nothing was impossible for them.
But they channelled their immense efforts into something that was essentially futile. Ultimately God controlled their destiny, not them. The confusion of their language was God’s way of letting them know this.
Tower of Babel, unknown Flemish Master, 1587; by placing a number of people at the forefront of the painting, the artist emphasises the human interaction needed for such a complex task; God throws this interaction into disarray
This painting shows the Tower near completion, piercing the clouds - but now almost deserted
The story is also a not-very-subtle dig at the city states of Mesopotamia – those grouped around the two great rivers of the Tigris and the Euphrates. The people of this area built enormous layered temple towers with two or three terraces, faced with kiln baked bricks. The cost in labor and money must have been immense.
These ‘ziggurats‘ must have looked gigantic to people in the surrounding flat plains. They were also culturally intimidating, since they required vast wealth, power and organization – something the Hebrew nomadic tribesmen could not hope to imitate.
Poking fun at the folly and extravagance of such buildings must have appealed to the tribesmen.
Manuscript illuminations
Tower of Babel, The Bedford Master, Book of Hours 1423
Meister der Weltenchronik, manuscript illumination, circa 1370
Modern Images of the Tower of Babel
Tower of Babel, Joel Stoehr, 2008
The Tower of Babel, Thunderfall
Bible Text: Genesis 1-9
1 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech.
2 As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.
3 They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar.
4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”
5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building.
6 The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.
7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”
8 So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city.
9 That is why it was called Babel—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.
Summary: the Tower of Babel
Medieval or modern, the message is the same: the less we rely on God and the more we think we can do without God, the more confused we become.
The Book of Genesis gets this message across in a story; artists have echoed the same idea in their pictures.
You can read more at ziggurats and the Tower of Babel.
