>>13485083Not really. The sundering of the tongues is God's way of removing his Holy Spirit from the people, and after that they are placed under the authority of the sons of god (angels) who rebel and become the pagan gods of idolatry. Humanity was never meant to be sundered in that way, it was just necessary to prevent them from congregating in their wickedness.
Remember that a lot of the images of wickedness in the Bible are cooperative, not just individual. Cain builds the first city. Sodom and Gomorrah are destroyed entirely because the cities themselves are corrupted. In the Psalms the nations that array themselves against Israel are depicted as "taking counsel together", the wicked men "lie in wait for the poor" in a sort of group, etc. So one of the means God uses to redeem people is to intentionally separate them or set them apart-- Enoch is set apart, Noah is set apart, the nations are set apart, the judges and righteous kings of Israel are set apart in their selection, as are many of the prophets, and then when Christ comes, he sets the Twelve and the Seventy apart from his other followers in order to purify them. So this setting apart isnt an indication of an eternal ordering, but a preparation-- Noah returns to the land, the king rules over Israel, the prophets return to relay the message of the Lord, and the apostles are dispersed after Pentecost to testify among all the nations. In fact the coming of Christ signifies the end of the separation of Israel from the nations, as Paul says, and now all peoples can become heirs of the promises to Abraham through baptism and all nations can be reunited organically into one through the Church, the "fullness of Him who fills all in all".
This is not my original thought, it's a paraphrase of Fr. Stephen de Young, an Orthodox priest.
