As the grandsons of Noah grew so did their families.  Some would spread to surrounding regions and begin a subculture of their own.  Many were less than a weeks ride away, but every family has differences and needs room to grow.  We did hear of a few which left for “distant lands” before the episode at Babel.

What made this situation sad is most of these early family branches left their point of origin in beliefs.   I certainly believed in Noah’s way of life.  By this point I knew his God was real.  Nevertheless, there was still so much preventing me from “connecting my head to my heart”.

Hearts Of Men Turn From God

I remembered what Noah said about the time before and there being a difference between knowing sin and not being able to know God. These people were turning to idolatry and with each step it became harder to reason with them. A hardness was setting into their hearts.

I never paid attention to this in my world.  I always believed that everyone has their own name for God.  Yet after experiencing life with Noah I saw that there was certainly something different.  It was not just who he was. It was like Yah walked beside him and was real.  It touched everything Noah’s hands touched.

In the south people had begun to build pyramids by the family of Mizraim. Nimrod had his tower. Others in outlying regions turned to idolatry as well. 

Without Yah as being the source of unification, all of mankind would break down.  This really hit me because I knew what the eventual future would hold over the years.

The cry of Nimrod became loud.  The sales pitch was peace, safety, food and health for all.  The problem was the price tag which came with it.

The structure of his society made the social system he created to be all powerful.  Naturally Nimrod was at the top of that food chain which did not help his self-proclaimed deity ego.  The guy was strong, powerful, and extremely convincing.

The families began to flock to his cities for one of two reasons.  Either they truly believed the ego and bought his sales pitch, or they were pressed into the cities by fear of being conquered.

Confusion At The Tower Of Babel

One night was all it took for the world to change.  Quietly, suddenly, without any warning or knowledge of what took place, it happened.  We all woke up that night at the same time but did not know its meaning.  At our farm there was nothing other than this eerie occurrence.

There wasn’t a sound, no light, no earthquake, nothing happened to us.  We simply all woke and had a feeling of dread.  It was as if by compulsion we walked to the gathering place in front of Noah’s home, the late-night fire was burning.

Sitting down we began to talk about what we were feeling, yet it was Noah that began to lead everyone in prayer.  It would take a few days before we saw the ramifications. Little did we know how many people would be coming our way.

A few nights after our odd event I had a difficult time going to sleep.  When I did sleep it felt as though it was mere microseconds and I heard shouting in the distance.  I shot up like a bolt of lighting.

After running outside I could see lamps, torches, and shadows of people moving in the night headed towards the farm.  This was not good.

Normally I would ring the alarm bell for wild animals or predators which would sometimes invade.  I ran down the path to the small watch tower which was rarely manned. Reaching the tower I began to ring the bell as hard and fast as possible.

Moments later the boys arrived with some of their sons.  Noah would be here eventually, but we couldn’t wait for him.  That crowd was coming in pretty fast.

We rushed to meet them, yet what we found was shocking.  Shem, Ham, and Japeth with their boys couldn’t understand them.  They were speaking, but it was a new language.

I couldn’t tell the difference.  I could understand the people, and I could understand Noah’s boys.  Normally Shem would be the point guy in handling things but on this night he couldn’t.  When I realized they had no idea what the men were saying I began to speak to the men from the crowd.

Shem was stunned.  He pulled me back, not in an angry way, but almost as if he had been hit by a jolt of electricity.  The look on his face was fear. 

“Clay, how is it that you speak like they do?  How can you understand them?” He asked.

I don’t know why they seem to sometimes forget that I shouldn’t be able to understand anyone here to begin with.  To me, everything sounded like English.  To them I spoke in what is apparently some early form of Hebrew.  How was I supposed to know what was going on?

A Story Of Chaos And Horror

The crowd was running for their lives.  The men wouldn’t stay quiet.  They were begging for help, rescue, medical aid, and food.  They were in complete confusion; it was hard to make sense out of what had happened.

Noah, being a little slower these days, came walking up with his cane and sat on a nearby tree stump.  He never was one to just jump in.  I remembered the first day I met him and how calm he had been then.

Noah asked for food to be brought, water, and as the sun rose we continued attending to needs.  Some of these needs were severe.  Not all made it to the farm alive.  Others were near death and all were exhausted as well as traumatized.

Finally, we were able to make out what had taken place.  Noah and Shem talked with the declared heads of their groups or families, and I would need to act as a translator.  The story was unbelievable.

The crowd was primarily from Babel, some from Akkad, and a couple families were from Erech.  Each shared the same story.  It would be in that same night we experienced our odd event that they also woke from sleep.  Not just these people, but the entire cities.

One described it as a feeling like the air grew thin, another said it felt like a temperature change.  Again no big booms, no light from the sky, no big events, the people simply gathered in the city center.

When the people gathered together it was then that chaos erupted.  We do not know for sure how many languages there were, yet large groups of people could not understand each other.  This barrier would seem to also impact families separating them from communication.

This caused a panic.  In the confusion many began to do things for self-preservation such as packing bags, gathering supplies, getting a weapon.  Then it would seem others not understanding what was taking place saw these actions as being hostile.

Meanwhile there were larger groups of people which found each other that did speak the same.  It was these that would turn on the smaller groups.  It did not take long for the poorest or those who were disenchanted from that society to loot and raid.

When that began it all went downhill pretty quick.  The command structure of the cities broke down.  Their warriors, also separated by language, had no clear authority.  It turned into a civil uprising and this crowd was an escaping group of refugees.

The Fallout After Babel

I vaguely remember from church the preacher talking about the “Tower of Babel”.  I do not remember them ever making it as significant as it should have been made.  They said something like God confused the languages and that’s where the different languages came from.  The end.

What I witnessed was carnage, displacement, and horror.  It was like a war happened and the entire social structure of the world fell apart.

Shem would later say to me that what the flood did to the world in death and altering the world environmentally, the confusion of language did to the world socially and economically.  This was a radical and unprecedented change which would bring chaos.

Noah had his family set guard although I doubt we could have stopped a mob.  Luckily where we were located was not considered prime lands.  The river and soil were rich, but most people wanted to be in the plains.  Converging rivers and the small but soon to be Mediterranean Sea offered better trade routes.

We were north of these lands in a more mountainous region.  To get to where we were would require uphill travel, rougher paths to walk on, and fewer resources.  Those that found us were refugees trying to hide or needing help.

As the days passed the mobs of power with their little armies would converge and fight, but thankfully not here.  The primary areas of conflict would range from modern day Egypt to Northern Iraq, Western Iran, and Northern Arabia.

A lot of smaller factions would flood west towards the forming Mediterranean.  The richest lands were without a doubt in the heart of Shinar.   It was here the bloodiest battles were fought.

The attempt to consolidate power raged and those who lost would flee.  Mostly it would be refugees that would dare go North or Northwest.  These lands leading to what would be Russia or Europe were still unstable.

To the north of our farm I witnessed multiple years of nice farming weather and then years of cold and year round ice.  This direction was risky, but some took it out of not having a choice.

The ice caps still were so dominant that the oceans we know in modern times had not yet fully formed.  There were seas, but not yet oceans.  One could walk on foot around the world if given enough time.

We heard of many people that were forced East.  There seemed to be a large migration which also went South into what would be Africa.

We shifted from being a farm to also a sort of waypoint for refugees heading North.  Occasionally we would meet those who spoke Noah’s original language, yet they were very few in number.

Those that did speak the original language would typically stay with Noah’s family.  Those that did not stay genuinely desired to move on to new lands.  Anyone was welcome to stay, yet this seemed to be the nature of things.

It would take years, yet the end victor of these conflicts would come from Akkad. In time there would be a showdown between these armies from the region of Sumer and that of Nimrod from Nineveh.

My Concern For Noah

As the world began to spiral out of control I found something much closer to home which began to worry me.  It was Noah.  What he witnessed I think broke him.  Watching him that night the refugees first came I saw it in his eyes.

Noah saw the old world destroyed due to the sin, evil, and rejection of God.  Now after so much struggle, raising his family, attempting to influence his grandsons, he saw the rise of evil once again.  The look in his eyes was one of being tired. Perhaps he was wondering if the struggle had been worth it.

After that night Noah changed.  It wasn’t like he gave up on life but rather he gave up on living.  He helped all who would accept, yet he himself was waiting for his time to end.  There was a heaviness around him.

While he appeared ready, I was not ready for him to go.  I was unsettled.  Not yet Noah, don’t go just yet.