Plain of Shinar

Biblical Text

Shinar appears several times in the Old Testament. The New Korean Revised Version renders it "land of Shinar" and "plain of Shinar."

• Genesis 10:10: The kingdom of Nimrod, a descendant of Ham, is said to have begun in "Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar."
• Genesis 11:2: After the Flood, people journeyed and found a plain in the land of Shinar, where they settled. There they built a city and a tower (Tower of Babel).
• Genesis 14:1, 9: Amraphel king of Shinar allied with other kings in battle. In this war Lot was taken captive.
• Joshua 7:21: Among the items Achan secretly took from Jericho was "a goodly Babylonish garment" (literally, a fine mantle of Shinar).
• Isaiah 11:11: Shinar is among the places from which God will bring back the remnant of His scattered people.
• Daniel 1:2: Nebuchadnezzar carried vessels from the temple in Jerusalem "into the land of Shinar to the house of his god."
• Zechariah 5:11: A vision depicts wickedness, symbolized by a woman shut inside an ephah (a vessel for measuring grain), being carried to the land of Shinar, where a house is to be built for it.

Background

Scholars generally identify Shinar with southern Mesopotamia, the plain along the lower reaches of the Tigris (the biblical Hiddekel) and the Euphrates. This is the region later called Babylonia. The etymology of the name is uncertain; there are several theories, including one connecting it with "Sumer."

The region is an alluvial plain built up from soil deposited by the rivers, so stone is scarce. The statement in Genesis 11:3 that the people "had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter" fits this geography well. Amraphel king of Shinar was once identified with King Hammurabi of Babylon, but many scholars today reject this identification.

Significance in Scripture as a Whole

Shinar is the land where Babel began. Babel in turn leads to Babylon, which later carried God's people into captivity. In Scripture, therefore, Shinar carries a twofold significance: it represents human pride that turns away from God and seeks to make a name for itself, and it is a place of exile. In Genesis it appears as the place where pride began, and in Daniel as the setting of the Babylonian captivity. Zechariah portrays it as the place to which wickedness returns to settle, and Isaiah as a point of departure from which the remnant returns.

The New Testament does not use the name "Shinar." Many interpreters, however, see this theme carried forward in Revelation, where Babylon the great symbolizes the powers that oppose God. There is also a tradition in the church that contrasts the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost in Acts 2 with the scattering of languages at Babel, reading Pentecost as its reversal.

Interpretations and Debated Questions

• Nimrod and the tower: The claim that Nimrod led the building of the Tower of Babel is not found in the text of Genesis. It derives from later Jewish tradition, such as Josephus's Antiquities of the Jews. The text says only that Nimrod's kingdom began in Shinar.
• "From the east": The Hebrew expression in Genesis 11:2 can be read either as "eastward" or as "from the east," and translations render it differently.
• Location of the tower: Some connect the Tower of Babel with the ziggurat, the stepped temple tower of Mesopotamia. The tower's exact location, however, cannot be determined with certainty.
• Zechariah 5: Interpreters differ on what the wickedness carried to Shinar represents. Proposed views include idolatry, greed, and foreign powers, among others.

In the Korean Church

In sermons on the Tower of Babel narrative, the plain of Shinar is frequently cited as the place where people gathered together and sought to make a name for themselves.