Can mortal man be in the right before God?
Can a man be pure before his Maker?
18 Even in his servants he puts no trust,
and his angels he charges with error; (Job 4:17-18)
God creates out of nothing. Wonderful you say. Yes, to be sure, but he does what is still more wonderful: He makes saints out of sinners.
― The Journals of Soren Kierkegaard
Adam and Eve after eating from the Tree of Knowledge. Public Domain Image from the Providence Lithograph Company.
The Bible is full of situations where God makes wonderful promises to His people and because of various human failings those being blessed manage to screw things up. Promises made by Yahweh God are to be completed in the time and method of His choosing. Unfortunately the people (or other beings) involved try often to second guess or otherwise impose their own will on the situation instead of putting their full faith in Yahweh and His promise. The Bible is full of examples of this starting in the Garden of Eden and continuing through multiple rebellions, their consequences, and ultimately Yahweh God’s masterful work to set everything right in the end.
So, let’s go back a few thousand years to the start of Genesis. We have the rebellion of Adam and Eve (through greed) that leads to their expulsion from Eden. We also have two rebellions of members of the Heavenly Host with the first being the Nahash (the serpent, Satan, etc. that rebels through excessive pride and deception) and the second being the Sons of God (translated from the word elohim which denotes a being of the spiritual realm). The Sons of God rebel by breaking the natural order set by God through having offspring with human women (Genesis 6) and then giving knowledge to mankind that leads to further sins such as violence, vanity, etc.
Noah: The Eve of the Deluge by John Linnel, 1848.
This culminates with Yahweh God bringing the flood and saving Noah’s family via the Ark. He then tells mankind to go spread out over the Earth again. However, the people turn against God’s wishes and come together to build the Tower of Babel.
In the Ancient Near East the sky was seen as the realm of the gods which is why they built structures such as ziggurats as places to reach towards the heavens and the realms of said gods.
Recreation of the Great Ziggarat of Ur. Public Domain Image.
There are many traditions that try to determine what the people were trying to do with the tower (create a gateway to the Heavens, become like God, make God come to mankind on their terms, thwart another attempt by God to destroy humanity by floods, etc.) but whichever it required a severe but ultimately merciful response from Yahweh God:
5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. 6 And the Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.” 8 So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. (Genesis 11:4-8).
The spreading of the peoples after Babel as listed in the Table of Nations (Genesis 10). Public Domain Image.
He would have been just to destroy the people at Babel but he doesn’t. Instead He forces them to spread over the Earth as He had previously commanded. As further punishment for once again turning away from Him, Yahweh also disinherited all the peoples of these new nations. This means that Yahweh God has nothing to do with them and instead appoints members of the Heavenly Host to be their “gods” for a time. Unfortunately, this doesn’t go well. No being save Yahweh is perfect and even these spirit beings of Heaven (by the time of the New Testament they are universally referred to as angels) can fall to pride and arrogance. Psalm 82 states:
God has taken his place in the divine council;
in the midst of the gods he holds judgment:
2 “How long will you judge unjustly
and show partiality to the wicked? Selah
3 Give justice to the weak and the fatherless;
maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute.
4 Rescue the weak and the needy;
deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”
5 They have neither knowledge nor understanding,
they walk about in darkness;
all the foundations of the earth are shaken.
6 I said, “You are gods,
sons of the Most High, all of you;
7 nevertheless, like men you shall die,
and fall like any prince.”
In other words, they were supposed to prepare their peoples to return to Yahweh. Instead, they rebelled and much like Satan in the Garden do severe harm to humanity. As we finish this article things are not looking good for humanity. They are disinherited by Yahweh God and placed under heavenly beings (elohim, Sons of God) that also rebel. All hope, however, is not lost and Yahweh God has a plan of redemption for His fallen earthly children. Through Abraham He will create a new elect nation by which he will bring all the nations back into the family.