“The problem with the Tower of Babel wasn’t that those Mesopotamians might have actually gotten to heaven. The problem was the staircases.”
Thoughts from daily Bible reading for today – August 16, 2026
[Jacob] had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. Genesis 28:12
Two things happened in my early childhood and made a lasting impact on my life.
First, in elementary school, I discovered there were at least hundreds of languages and was confident that I would learn at least six by the time I went to work at the U.N. I think I was in third grade.
Second, still in elementary school, I became fascinated by the works of a Flemish Renaissance painter – Pieter Bruegel. A teacher showed my class his paintings, and a print of one hung on the wall next to my seat the rest of the school year. It wasn’t that it was beautiful. It was that his paintings told stories. There was so much to see.
I never went to work at the U.N. But I did grow up to work at the Olympics where languages came in handy. I still haven’t learned six.
I did become a Christian, like Bruegel. And when I found his painting of the Tower of Babel as I was studying Genesis 11 one day, I was in awe. I began researching ziggurats, ancient Mesopotamian buildings, like the tower in Genesis, with staircases reaching toward heaven.
Genesis 11 is a terrible story about skillful-but-foolish people who broke God’s heart by their disobedience and arrogance. It was difficult for me to think of the birth of many languages as a bad thing, but I was kind of missing the point. It wasn’t until this week, as I was listening to a sermon about Jacob in Genesis 28 that I learned the real problem with the Tower of Babel.
In that chapter, Jacob is fleeing his family and the consequences of his own sin, and he’s running toward a future he can’t imagine. He has no one and nothing, and he is entirely unprotected. Then God comes to him in a dream.
Jacob sees a staircase set on the ground, reaching to heaven, with angels descending and ascending. God appears beside him and promises he will be with him, watch over him, never leave him, keep his promises to him, and give him a huge family through whom the whole family will be blessed. When he wakes up, Jacob is terrified and says, “Surely, Yahweh is in this place.… This is the gate of heaven.”
Thousands of years later, Jesus surprises a skeptical new disciple when he tells him this: “Very truly I tell you, you will see ‘heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on’ the Son of Man.”
The problem with the Tower of Babel wasn’t that those Mesopotamians might have actually gotten to heaven. The problem was the staircases. They totally misrepresent how people can come to be with God. In every other religion, you have to work your way up to God. But God came down in the mess of Babel. He came down to meet Jacob. Jesus came down to be with us. We can’t earn the right to ascend to heaven. Jesus is the way. He himself is our staircase to heaven.
Prayer
Lord of heaven and earth, you are God, high and lifted up, exalted over everything, yet you come down to meet us. There is no God like you in the heavens or on earth. There is no other God so full of love, so full of promise, so full of truth and beauty and light. Thank you, Father. Thank you, Jesus, Messiah, Staircase of the Angels. Thank you for your unfailing love.
Application
Stop striving to prove you’re good enough to get to God. You’re not, and you never will be. But Jesus is. If you belong to Him, God sees Jesus’ righteousness when He looks at you. He doesn’t call us to climb up to Him. He came down for us, and He still does. He is present and invites us to draw near to Him. Today, trust that wherever you are can become the gate of heaven, because Jesus is the stairway, the gate, and the way.
Related Reading
Genesis 11:1-9; Genesis 28:10-19; John 1:43-51
Worship Resource
Shil Ben Hod: Gate of Heaven
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