Scripture documents the history of how God, having initiated the world’s creative development over six days, collaborated with mankind in drawing its growth towards perfection. It begins with a garden and ends with a garden-city. It begins with the separation of heaven and earth and ends with the unification of heaven and earth. Yet we see in the story of scripture something majestic and beautiful: God not only collaborates with the righteous acts of the Children of Adam in bringing the world to its glory- He also utilizes their rebellion. It is in the nature of the world that it is co-constituted with the human family, the Image of God. What God gave to the Sons of Adam, He never revokes. This is the note on which Genesis concludes: “you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good” (Genesis 50:20). In Genesis 4, we see how the cities of Cain developed the matter of the world into technological and cultural innovations turned towards evil: they worked metal into instruments of violence, instruments which certainly set the music to Lamech’s celebration of murder (Genesis 4:21-24). Yet by the time of Kings David and Solomon, metals were worked into the House of God and carried the sound of the music of the psalms.
History is never played in reverse. When the world has advanced prematurely, God retains the growth but redirects it towards perfection in the good. This is what we see in the grand story of Nimrod’s empire. In preceding posts, we have seen that the northern and southern kingdoms of Israel and Judah were not exiled by two separate great powers. Rather, the history of Assyria and Babylon can be traced back to the earliest civilization after the flood. Nimrod is described as a new Cain, a man of blood who sought to unify the world around his own city built unto the honor of his own name. The city of God is ordered towards the magnification of the Name of God (Deuteronomy 12:5) which is given to Abraham as a “great Name” (Genesis 12:1-3). But how can divine and human creativity intersect here? Can the city of Man become the city of God? In fact, this is exactly what we find in the rest of the Scriptural narrative. A talented chef, faced with poor ingredients, will be able to chop and cook the material into something pleasing. God does the same.
Nimrod’s empire was built out of two fourfold cities- the first Babelic Empire of Babel, Akkad, Uruk, and Calneh and the first Assyrian Empire of Nineveh, Rehoboth-Ir, Calah, and Resen (Genesis 10:10-12). The first Assyrian Empire was ruled by the founding King of Babylon. This helps account for why the Assyrians believed themselves to possess the divine right of rule over Babylon (as is reflected in the Assyrian Synchronistic History of Babylon and Assyria) throughout their history. Yet when God wishes to remake the world, He first cuts it up. Hence, in the Dispersion, God confuses the languages of the Children of Adam- he turns them against one another and sends them to their own lands. Recall the dynamic of land and city in the Bible. The city is the developed form of the human body-politic upon which the land is centered. Ancient empires are best understood not in terms of territorial boundaries, but in terms of the cities collated under the hegemony of a single city. The lands which make up the territory of these imperial powers are lands bound to respective cities. Assyria is a land or region. Babylon is a city. Hence, the idealized form of Nimrod’s world empire was centered on the King of Babylon as ruler of Assyria.
Throughout the two millennia following the Dispersion, the Assyrian and Babylonian states developed in relation to each other. The Enuma Elish began with the celestial war which produced the cosmos and concluded with the descent of the City of Babylon as the throne of the world. It is instructive to recall that the Enuma Elish was found in the Library of the Assyrian King Ashurbanipal. God set the fragments of Nimrod’s world empire at odds to restrict the individual power of any idolatrous people- but it was still God’s intention that the nations of the world be unified in a differentiated oneness. Genesis 11 describes a world culture bound in “language” as well as “lip.” It was unified in terms of both its cult and its culture. Zephaniah 3 prophesies of the day when God will turn the lip of the nations to a pure lip, so that they will call on the Name of the LORD and serve Him with One Accord (Zephaniah 3:9). St. Paul draws on this theme in describing the liturgical life of the Church:
“May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God. For I tell you that Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God’s truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. As it is written, “Therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles, and sing to your name.”” (Romans 15:5–9, ESV)
We see in this text the beautiful convergence of God’s differentiated unity and the differentiated unity of the Church. In bringing the manifold nations to the praise of God, St. Paul describes the unity of their voice in glorifying the Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ. The nations are one in the Church yet many in their languages because God Himself is a manifold unity. And we also see, in the history of the Church, that the Apostles do not depart sinful Jerusalem and begin to build a city of their own. Rather, the kingship of Jesus Christ in the city of God is extended to enfold the cities of the nations into His polity. The Spirit lights the Altar in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost, and the river of life flows through the lips of the Apostles all the way to the City of Rome. St. Paul even embodies this unity in the Jerusalem Collection. In the liturgy, we offer a tithe to God in thanksgiving for His giving us life in Jesus Christ. St. Paul intends to collect these tithes in Rome (Romans 15:26-27) and carries them all the way to Jerusalem, thereby fulfilling the prophetic vision of Isaiah 66:20: “they shall bring all your brothers from the nations as a Tribute Offering to the LORD.”
But what does this have to do with Nimrod’s empire? What we will see in future posts on this subject is the continuity which flows from Genesis 11 all the way to the New Testament. In fact, the city of Rome stood at the head of a polity which had reformed between Assyria and Babylon. We can trace its history through the pages of the Books of Jeremiah, Kings, and Daniel. We will document the reformation of this polity under divine providence and its inheritance by the Roman state in the next posts.