Babel Deified the Heavens
The religions of the nations began at Babel as the worship of the sun, moon and stars, and their gods are empty idols, while the LORD made the heavens.
Four other clusters build on this: Hidden and Revealed: The Descending City, The Root Is Love, Out of the Miry Clay and The Light of the First Day.
Scripture shows this in five steps:
It all comes together in Romans 1:23-25.
Where did all the gods of the nations come from? Some say a royal family from Babel was made into gods and carried around the world. Others say the gods are real spirit beings, a kind of council of rival powers. Scripture says neither. It shows men looking up at the sky they share, worshipping it, and calling it god. And it calls those gods what they are: nothing.
Genesis 11:4
“And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.”
Genesis 11:4
This is where it starts. The tower points up, into heaven. And the builders want to “make us a name.” These are not two sins but one. Man lifts himself up by climbing into the heaven he reaches for. The bricks go up, and so does the worship.
Genesis gives no long myth here, no goddess queen, no family of gods. It gives only a tower built to reach heaven and make a name. The gods that came after are that heaven given a face.
Genesis 10:8-10
“And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth… And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar.”
Genesis 10:8, 10
Scripture names the first “mighty one in the earth,” Nimrod, and it says where his kingdom began: at Babel, the city of the tower. So there is one source, and Scripture names it.
But it did not spread as a family line. Dead kings were not the start of the sun god. They were taken up into the sun and stars men already worshipped. The dead were made gods by being merged into the heavens.
Genesis 3:5
“For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.”
Genesis 3:5
Babel is Eden’s lie again. The serpent offered: you shall be as gods. “Let us make us a name” is the same reach, now built in brick. The man who wants to be a god and the man who worships the heavens are the same man. Reaching up is the worship.
I know that reach. It is mine. I have wanted to make a name for myself.
And this shows who is behind it all: one deceiver, the serpent, saying in Shinar what he said in the garden. Behind all the idols there is not a crowd of rival powers. There is one lie from one liar.
Deuteronomy 4:19
“And lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the sun, and the moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven, shouldest be driven to worship them, and serve them, which the LORD thy God hath divided unto all nations under the whole heaven.”
Deuteronomy 4:19
Why do Babylon, Egypt, Canaan, Greece and Rome all worship a sun that dies and rises, and a queen of heaven? Not because one family carried its religion everywhere. Because they all had the same sky. Every nation looks up at the same sun, moon and stars. That is why the same worship is found all over the world.
Psalm 96:5
“For all the gods of the nations are idols: but the LORD made the heavens.”
Psalm 96:5
This is the verdict. The word for “idols” means worthless things, nothings. And the verse says why: the LORD made the heavens. They worship the heavens. He made them. The “god” is a created thing with a face painted on it, and the Creator stands behind the very thing they bow to.
So the gods of the nations are not real beings or a council of powers. “We know that an idol is nothing in the world” (1 Corinthians 8:4). Paul does say that people sacrifice to devils (1 Corinthians 10:20). There are real fallen angels behind the worship, but they are not the gods the nations named, and they serve one lie with one author. One lie, worship the creature, and a thousand empty idols.
Romans 1:23-25
“And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things… Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever.”
Romans 1:23, 25
Here the chain closes. Paul says exactly what happened: they traded the glory of God for images, and they worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator. The stars above and the animals below are all created things. To bow to any of them is the one exchange: the truth of God for a lie.
And what Babel began does not end there. In Revelation, Babylon comes back as a harlot on a throne who says, “I sit a queen” (Revelation 18:7). The reach that built the tower builds the throne.
What this means
The religions of the nations began at Babel, as the worship of the heavens. Their gods are empty idols. The LORD made the heavens they bow to.
The tower is not only in Shinar. Every time I want to make a name for myself, I am laying bricks. The answer is not to climb higher. It is to bow to the One who made the heavens.
Connected chains
This cluster goes hand in hand with The Waters Above Are in the Highest Heaven, Javan, the Elements, and the Dove Without Grace and The Head Is the Saviour of the Body.