Genesis 11:1–9

THE TOWER OF BABYLON

11The whole earth had the same language and vocabulary. ²As people migrated from the east,^B 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 asphalt^m for mortar.) ⁴And 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.”

⁵Then the Lord came down^o to look over the city and the tower that the humans^C 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,^p and they stopped building the city. ⁹Therefore it is called Babylon,^DEq for there the Lord confused the language of the whole earth, and from there the Lord scattered them throughout the earth.