Genesis 11:1–9
11 The whole earth had the same language and vocabulary. 2 As people migrated from the east,J they found a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there.l 3 They said to each other, “Come, let’s make oven-fired bricks.” (They used brick for stone and asphaltm for mortar.) 4 And they said, “Come, let’s build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the sky.n Let’s make a name for ourselves; otherwise, we will be scattered throughout the earth.”
5 Then the Lord came downo to look over the city and the tower that the humansK were building. 6 The 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. 7 Come, let’s go down there and confuse their language so that they will not understand one another’s speech.” 8 So from there the Lord scattered them throughout the earth,p and they stopped building the city. 9 Therefore it is called Babylon,L,M,q for there the Lord confused the language of the whole earth, and from there the Lord scattered them throughout the earth.