Genesis 11:5

The Lord came down to see

God’s visitation

1.

Men’s apostasy and proud attempts are knit together with God’s visitation.

2. God is below when men think He hath forsaken the earth, and is near to visit the wickedness of man.

3. God’s descent is for vengeance sometimes upon sinners.

4. God doth visit the beauty and strength of wickedness.

5. The apostate sons of Adam may build their fabrics to prevent God’s judgments.

6. Jehovah will mark for vengeance the sons of wickedness and weakness in all their buildings against Him (Genesis 11:5). (G. Hughes, B. D.)

Lessons

1. God speaks, as well as marks, the attempts of the ungodly to their reproach and confusion.

2. God points out the greatest advantages of violent workers of iniquity to scorn.

3. Unity of minds, resolutions, and communications, are the greatest props to wicked undertakers.

4. Violent workers of iniquity presume to finish as well as begin: that nothing shall be withheld from them.

5. Proud and presumptuous undertakings of men are a scorn and derision to God (Genesis 11:6). (G. Hughes, B. D.)

God’s inspection

Almighty God Himself came down to see what the children of men were doing, and when He comes down (a phrase which is used to accommodate Himself to our methods of expression), nothing can escape the penetration of His eye. He looks at our day books, ledgers, and other memorandum books, to see how we are building the tower of our life; He visits our country residences and palatial buildings for the purpose of trying their foundations; He looks into all the building of our fortune, that He may see whether our gains have been honestly secured. Terrible is the day for the bad man on which Almighty God lays His great hand--the hand on which the winds are hidden, the great palm in which all the stars of the heaven are gathered--upon the tower which is being built. He will shake it, and, if the foundation is bad, the whole superstructure will be thrown down to the dust! When men build their towers under the conviction that every stone of them will be tried by Divine power--when they build their cities, and erect their towers, and extend their properties, under the assurance that not one thing of all the things that their hands are doing will escape the test of God’s Spirit--we may expect life to be built upon a true foundation, and according to a righteous plan. What we have to ponder is this most certain fact, that God will come down to see our work, and that there is no possibility of concealing from Him any incorrectness of plan or any deficiency of service. (J. Parker, D. D.)