The City of Man vs. The Semi-Nomadic Life
The Bible records for us a period in the history of God’s people where they were not city-dwellers. Post-Garden life saw the erection of the city of Enoch, by Cain, contrasted with the pastoral life of Abel. The great patriarch Abraham was a nomad for all his life. Not only was he commanded by God to leave one of the great Mesopotamian cities which had come about after the great flood, but he traveled about constantly living on the fringes of other cities, referring to himself as a “stranger and an alien” (Gen. 23:4). The greatest contrast here between “God’s Nomads” and “The City of Men” is Abraham and the vile city of Sodom and Gomorrah. This contrast was made even more evident in the fact that God destroyed the city which had become consumed with sexual perversion and various other sins. To be sure the “city,” as an idea, was not shaping up to be what God had originally desired.
The fact that Abraham’s descendants were more settled in Egypt is hardly a positive attribute of their city dwelling; for there they were slaves under Egyptian rule and forced to help build this godless city. Let me be clear here: it was not that God’s desire for the city had changed; rather it was that the Fall had corrupted the goals of man in the city and, like all things, made God’s good gift and design now prone to be abused. Rule under Pharaoh’s thumb left a bad taste in the mouths of the Israelites, but their time as nomads in the wilderness created in them a longing for that return to the godly city which was originally meant for man. B.T. Arnold writes, “Part of the attraction of the Promised Land was the agricultural life it could afford, and the cities and towns in which the Israelites could dwell.”[1] The Promised Land was their desire because of the very fact that it was city life, it was so vastly different from what they had as wandering nomads in the wilderness.
The city was always meant to be a good thing for man and a place where God would be glorified and worshiped. But the Tower of Babel is just one instance of where man’s sinfulness corrupted the city and destroyed the intent behind its original creation. But not even the sinful abuses of the city by men deter God from using the city and loving the city. In the Promised Land the city of Jerusalem is seen as the city of God and there develops, in the Old Testament (carried over into the New), a theological contrast between the cities of Jerusalem and Babylon. This idea has been picked up on by numerous commentators, scholars, theologians, and dates even as far back as Augustine who talked of this tension in terms of “The City of God” and “The City of Man.”
[1] B.T. Arnold, “City, Citizenship.” New Dictionary of Biblical Theology. ed. D.A. Carson, Graeme Goldsworthy, Brian S. Rosner, and T. Desmond Alexander . Downer’s Grove: IVP, 2000. 415.
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