[Genesis 10]
Genesis 10 is a bit of freebie, as it's a genealogy. Most of the names in here aren't as well known, so it's harder to do cool things with it like you can with some of the later ones. Nimrod stands out because he, like Dorcas and other funny-named Biblical characters, cannot be taught in Sunday School because it will quickly derail into nothing by funny name jokes.
Really though, I got nothing for this. They did their job and started having babies.
[Genesis 11:1]
At first this sounds like a contradiction since we the previous list of people sorted them out by language, and then it says here they all had one language. I assume that this story happens sometime in the middle of that list of people, instead of happening right at the end. Either that or the sorting could have been applied retroactively based on whose descendants got what language. I dunno.
[Genesis 11:1-3]
"They had brick for stone," (NKJV) but no one would trade with them because they had 8 victory points on the board and a development card on the table that's been there for 9 turns, so that stone will probably make them a city and win the game.
...
Sorry.
So they're all travelling in one big pack, and have figured out brick-making by now. Based on the genealogy above, they were doing good at the "make babies" command, but so far not doing so hot on the "spread out and populate the Earth" part of the plan. They were getting the city-building thing down pretty good and were reluctant to start spreading out like the earth needed.
The hardest part of God's call on your life can often be the people that you have to leave behind. There's the obvious times when you've been hanging out with deadbeats and you need to find some people who won't hold you back, but even more difficult is the times when it's just time to move on to some place new. God didn't necessarily want them to spread out because they were all bad people and needed to be separated (though they didn't end up too great, based on the rest of the passage), but because the plan for repopulation required them to go elsewhere. Sometimes with the talents God gives you and the call that's on your life, you have to relocate and mess up some ties with the people where you are. But you can't let that fear of change stop you, because you may be messing up a bigger plan than you realize.
[11: 4-9]
So these guys, to save themselves from having to spread out, decide they're going to build a massive tower that will serve as a central hub for civilization, and all settle right around there.
What's interesting here isn't just that they did that, because that's just human nature to not want to leave each other, but that God said "Crap, they can pull this off. We have to do something here." Specifically God was worried because, with the level of unity they had, they could do whatever it was they decided. It took God mixing up their languages and forcibly scattering them around the world to stop this plan from happening.
What's sad here is that we have a perfect example of the power that we have when we band together and work for a common cause, but it was being put towards a project that was so stupid it took a miracle from God just so we wouldn't jack up the entire earth in the process. The lesson here is to make sure that our leadership knows what's up and is in tune with God. More specifically, if you are in a leadership position, make sure you know where God is going in your field. When leaders can get people rallied together and working towards a common goal, they will achieve that goal. So never underestimate the power of people working together, and always keep tabs on the people leading these movements and make sure their inevitable success will be a good thing.
[11: 10-32]
And then we get another big genealogy chunk. This one's a bit of a bigger deal though, because it introduces us to the next major set of players in Biblical history: Abram, his wife Sarai, and his nephew Lot. They were originally from Ur, and they moved to Canaan. They will be the focus of the next chunk of Scripture, so we'll leave it there for now.
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