Shem Knew Abraham and the Tower of Babel

Today I read Genesis 11 which tells the generations of Shem down to the time of Abraham and also tells the story of the Tower of Babel. Now, I'm sure most of you have heard the theory that Shem and Melchizedek are one and the same. I'll be honest that I don't know if this is true or not, although the timing fits. Shem was only 390 years old when Abraham was born and Shem lived to be 600 years old. As far as I know, Shem was still alive when Abraham died because although I can't remember exactly how long it was, I do not believe Abraham lived to be 200 years old. But just to still be alive to see your 9th generation, wouldn't that be something! Of course, Shem is not the only one with this experience. Adam was the same way as were most people during that period of the world. People were so long lived that they were still having children even though they were great-great-great-great grandparents! Kind of blows your mind to think about it but I think it would be really neat. I'd love to have been able to meet my ancestors 9 generations back and hear what life was like for them. That would be really neat.

The other part of the chapter deals with the Tower of Babel although this event, arguably one of the most important in the history of the human race, only has a few short verses to tell us what happened. But as most Christians are well aware, the people of the world in a very short time after the flood had become quite arrogant and decided to build a tower to reach the heavens and God's dwelling place. Of course this did not please God at all and in order to stop the people from doing this, He confounded the language of the people so that they could no longer understand one another. I have often pondered on this story and wondered if there was not more to it than the arrogance of man to try and reach the heavens with a tower. From what I remember of my seminary and college religion courses, Nimrod, who founded the city where this was taking place, was not a righteous man at all. But beyond that I do not remember much else other than what you can read in the scriptures.

It would be a very interesting place to have everyone all speaking the same language. It's hard to imagine but with the world so widespread now, even if we all spoke the same language we most likely would not be able to understand each other due to the various accents that would have cropped up over the millennia. Still it's fun to think on such things. Until tomorrow.