Babel Boom and Bust

BABEL BOOM AND BUST

Seba rose early that morning to survey the building site before work began for the day.  Within the hour the place would be buzzing like a bee hive with thousands of slaves hauling bricks and mixing mortar to keep hundreds of masons busy through twelve to fourteen hours of daylight.  His brother Nimrod would have worked them all through the night if there had been any way to do it.  Even so, the sheer volume of workers involved in the building of the tower produced outstanding progress.  In just over twelve months they were up to the seventh level—half-way to the top.

            The seventh level.  The Seba layer.  Today they would start on the portion of the tower which assured his immortality.  Every brick in the entire level would be marked with his name enclosed in the circle of eternity.  Slaves had been making his bricks for weeks, no expense being spared.  He had watched the piles rise higher and higher as brick after brick came out of the kilns.  Today they would lay the first row of Seba bricks, his eternal claim to fame!

            The entire tower, of course, bore the name of Nimrod.  Nimrod the mighty hunter! Nimrod the city-builder!  The most monumental building project in the world would never have happened if it hadn’t been for Nimrod. 

            Nimrod had the slave labor available, a result of his many wars and conquests as a mighty hunter of men.  Nimrod had the resources necessary, due to the tax base in his kingdom that stretched through the Tigris-Euphrates River Valley.  Nimrod had the vision to unite a large group of people under one government. Nimrod had the courage to disobey the command of Great-Grand-father Noah to increase and fill the earth.  Nimrod brought progress, economic prosperity, riches, one hundred percent employment and fame.

            Nimrod’s name would be on the tower.  But Seba’s name would be on the seventh floor just like the names of all the other major contributors.  Everyone who ever came to Shinar to see the tower would know the name Seba.  

            As the sun rose over the eastern horizon the scraping and pounding of construction began.  Seba sat on the upper level of the sixth layer, watching closely as a slave placed two buckets of Seba bricks in front of a mason. The Seba layer rose before him in his imagination. 

Suddenly the mason shouted at the slave, something Seba couldn’t understand.  The slave shouted back, and though he heard the voice clearly Seba realized that he hadn’t been able to understand him either.  Rushing over to where they were working, he immediately recognized the problem—the bricks were not Seba brick. So he started shouting, but neither the slave nor the mason understood a thing he yelled.  Seba pointed angrily at the name on the brick and all three screamed louder as if sheer volume might make them understandable.

            The screaming soon attracted a crowd, but of the dozen men who gathered not one could make heads or tails of what anyone else said.

            All over the tower the same confusion reigned.  Occasionally someone would find another person who understood their language, but if they were both slaves they couldn’t understand what the masons wanted, and if they were both masons they weren’t about to haul their own bricks.  Angry voices screamed the entire work day and by nightfall the Nimrod Tower project ground to a halt. 

            Nimrod raged! Seba cried! God watched!

Within days the city of Babylon with its half-finished tower resembled a ghost town.  Small groups of settlers who could understand each other set off to the north, south, east and west to form their own clans and languages, territories and nations.  Nimrod and Seba had reckoned without God—and the boom had gone bust.