Life in Cities

The Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1 – 11:9) 

Confounding the languages was an act of MERCY from God. 

"In general almost every sin of man is intensified by the existence of large cities. However, in rural areas, there is less crime, a more peaceful life style and a higher degree of morals. Life is more satisfying and fulfilling. God's way has always been to instruct us to do that which was best for us. But today as it was in the time of Babylon, sinful men had evil intentions and wanted the power and wealth associated with large numbers of people." 

Source: "The Tower of Babel & The Ancestry of Abraham (Genesis 11:1-9)" <www.bible-truth.org/GEN11.HTM>

Question, consider “country folk” and “city folk” for a moment. Country folk tend to be stereotyped as being innocent in their thinking, naive, and (traditionally) to some extent more God-fearing. Contrast them with city folk, and you can see quite a difference in thinking and behavior. Country folk tend to be more relaxed while city folk tend to be more uptight and stressed. Country folk do not understand the evils of the city, while city folk often do all manner of evil. When people are confined to a city, the evil imaginations are multiplied. 

People in less sparse surroundings such as the countryside seem to have less of a concentration of evil imaginations, and indeed don not because there are less people to concentrate on evil. The imaginations are still there no doubt, but they are not as collected as those in the city. A second point, is that when more people are together, there is more money to be made, more power to be gotten, and more false teaching to be believed by more people. 

Thus, God confounding the languages at Babel was an act of mercy in order to retard the immediate development of wickedness en masse at such an early stage. Later in Genesis we will cover Sodom and Gomorrah. Nevertheless, in Genesis, not long after the Flood, we read of such wicked cities. How much more if the Lord had allowed man to begin city life at such an early stage? One lesson to learn: where people are concentrated in large groups, there will be greater variety and concentrations of evil present.