The Tower of Babel

Genesis 11

¹The whole earth had the same language and vocabulary.

²As people migrated from the east, they found a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there.

³They said to each other, “Come, let us make oven-fired bricks.” (They used brick for stone and asphalt for mortar.)

⁴And they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the sky. Let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise, we will be scattered throughout the earth.”

⁵Then the LORD came down to look over the city and the tower that the humans were building.

⁶The LORD said, “If they have begun to do this as one people all having the same language, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.

⁷Come, let’s go down there and confuse their language so that they will not understand one another’s speech.”

⁸So from there the LORD scattered them throughout the earth, and they stopped building the city.

⁹Therefore it is called Babylon, for there the LORD confused the language of the whole earth, and from there the LORD scattered them throughout the earth.