Texts in Conversation
Genesis 11 and Genesis 28 describe structures like ziggurats, stepped towers believed to connect heaven and earth with the temple and deity at the top. In Genesis 11, the people build a tower attempting to bring God down. In Genesis 28, Jacob dreams of a stairway reaching heaven, where God stands at the top, calling Jacob up.
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Genesis 11:4
Hebrew Bible
2 When the people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. 3 Then they said to one another, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” (They had brick instead of stone and tar instead of mortar.) 4 Then they said, “Come, let’s build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens so that we may make a name for ourselves. Otherwise we will be scattered across the face of the entire earth.” 5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the people had started building. 6 And the Lord said, “If as one people all sharing a common language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be beyond them.
Date: 5th Century B.C.E. (Final composition) (based on scholarly estimates)
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Genesis 28:12
Hebrew Bible
11 He reached a certain place where he decided to camp because the sun had gone down. He took one of the stones and placed it near his head. Then he fell asleep in that place 12 and had a dream. He saw a stairway erected on the earth with its top reaching to the heavens. The angels of God were going up and coming down it 13 and the Lord stood at its top. He said, “I am the Lord, the God of your grandfather Abraham and the God of your father Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the ground you are lying on.
Date: 5th Century B.C.E. (Final composition) (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... Genesis 11 offers a bridge to Genesis 12: Genesis 11 is failed human initiative to reestablish God’s presence; Genesis 12 is God’s initiative that will lead to relationship in his presence and sacred space. 21 This suggests again that Genesis 1–11 serves the function of providing an introduction to the ancestral narratives in Genesis 12–50. As a last supporting observation, we can compare and contrast Genesis 11 with Jacob’s dream in Genesis 28. In Genesis 11 the people build a ziggurat (stairway) in order to try to bring God down and establish sacred space. In Genesis 28, as part of the process of establishing the covenant, God initiates the coming down (stairway) and the recognition of sacred space (Bethel: this is the house of God!). We see then that Yahweh is moving toward the establishment of his presence (which will be completed when he descends to inhabit the tabernacle) and is now doing so in connection to the covenant. On the basis of all of these literary and theological observations, the covenant can now be recognized as having its focus in the reestablishment of access to God’s presence on earth ..."
Longman, Tremper, and John H. Walton
The Lost World of the Flood: Mythology, Theology, and the Deluge Debate
(pp. 100-101) InterVarsity Press, 2018
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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I've never noticed that before but it makes sense