I love San Francisco. Our beautiful city and other cities being frequently on our minds, I thought a brief biblical theology of the City might be of interest. What follows is the second part of a three-part essay. Part 1 is here. —PCE+
Run your fingers over the leitmotif of ‘city’ in the biblical textum, and you see that it is one of many cultural attainments recorded and attributed to the line of Cain. We read about not only urbanization that starts with Abel’s brother but also something of nomadism and its origin in the line of Cain; and animal husbandry; and the invention of musical instruments; and metallurgy. As far as scripture is concerned, technology and the arts in all of their variegated manifestations come out of the line of Cain.
When we look at that list and put it all together, and we see that cities are just one cultural artifact among them, we get the point that Cain’s fratricide of his brother Abel notwithstanding, the Bible’s attitude toward cities is not cancel culture.
The Bible is aware that there are reasons a reader might be tempted to consign cities to the trash heap, to write them off. But they are not written off in scripture. This is a matter of use and abuse, a matter of what’s the purpose that they are designed to serve. Those musical instruments, the same ones invented here in the line of Cain, will later be used by David to sing God’s praise. Just so the cities even of Cain, ultimately the cities of Canaan, will be used in the sovereign purpose of God for redemption.
What makes a city? Why did Cain invent a city anyway? It wasn’t that there was a massive population that needed to be accommodated. In the Hebraic imagination what makes a city a city is that it is intended as a permanent settlement. That’s all. The city is a place where you get to reside; it’s not a temporary encampment. What makes a city a city, Cain’s purpose in founding a city, is his answer to the curse of being thrust out from the presence of God into a world in which anyone can kill you. Cain saw this when he took his brother out into the field where no one was watching, out beyond the long arm of the law, out into the rural areas and wilderness, beyond the perimeter of civilization. And so the invention of the city is a refuge from that danger which was so acute in the mind of Cain. The city was a refuge from his wandering and from his exposure.
There’s a parallelism here that’s easier to notice in the original Hebrew than in the way it comes into English. There’s play on words: Cain builds a city and has a son. In Hebrew a son was called a ben because you ‘built’ him. A son was a monument to parental effort. In our own culture, such a concept is I think still familiar to us. So there’s a kind of parallelism here. Cain, who has murdered his brother, suddenly aware of the brevity of life, seems to be compelled to make his mark and achieve a self-made immortality. And so he begets a son and builds a city or he builds a son and he builds a city. The same could be said of Babel in the eleventh chapter of Genesis.
I’ve made elsewhere the waggish observation that the best way to read the Bible is to put a cushion on the floor and do a headstand; reading the Bible upside down (or thinking about reading it that way) keeps you in mind that the Bible means to overturn or contradict our usual assumptions about how the world works. Contrary to bucolic expectations, God’s purpose is not to anathematize the city, to sponsor a flight into the wilderness or a monastic movement of withdrawal.
That’s what we expect from the Bible, but it is not what we get. Instead God intends to give to his people that which fallen people seek in the city but will never find there. They want security in the city but they will never find it there. They want community — they feel acutely lonely and exposed and alienated — but it won’t be found in the City of Man.
God has a City for God’s people. Hebrews chapter eleven says of Abraham that “by faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise.” And what was God’s promise? “For he was looking forward to the city with foundations whose architect and builder was God.” Everything that men and women want in the earthly city is something God has for his people in the heavenly city.
And that city can be ours even in measure in this life. God’s intention for the cities of Canaan was not obliteration; it was dispossession. It was for the Israelites to go in and take those cities and bring them under new management, liberating them from service to humankind to now service to the Creator of humankind. What we see God do with cities in biblical literature and in history, is take what was a weapon in the hands of Satan and run him through with it.
Deuteronomy 6, “When the Lord your God brings you into the land he swore to your forefathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to give you — a land with large, flourishing cities you did not build, houses filled with all kinds of good things you did not provide, wells you did not dig, and vineyards and olive groves you did not plant — then when you eat and are satisfied be careful that you do not forget the Lord who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.”
To be continued.