Genesis 11

The Tower of Babylon

11At first, the people of the whole world had only one language and used the same words. ²As they wandered about in the East, they came to a plain in Babylonia and settled there. ³They said to one another, “Come on! Let’s make bricks and bake them hard.” So they had bricks to build with and tar to hold them together. ⁴They said, “Now let’s build a city with a tower that reaches the sky, so that we can make a name for ourselves and not be scattered all over the earth.”

⁵Then the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which those men had built, ⁶and he said, “Now then, these are all one people and they speak one language; this is just the beginning of what they are going to do. Soon they will be able to do anything they want! ⁷Let us go down and mix up their language so that they will not understand one another.” ⁸So the Lord scattered them all over the earth, and they stopped building the city. ⁹The city was called Babylon,^g because there the Lord mixed up the language of all the people, and from there he scattered them all over the earth.

The Descendants of Shem

¹⁰These are the descendants of Shem. Two years after the flood, when Shem was 100 years old, he had a son, Arpachshad. ¹¹After that, he lived another 500 years and had other children.

¹²When Arpachshad was 35 years old, he had a son, Shelah; ¹³after that, he lived another 403 years and had other children.

¹⁴When Shelah was 30 years old, he had a son, Eber; ¹⁵after that, he lived another 403 years and had other children.

¹⁶When Eber was 34 years old, he had a son, Peleg; ¹⁷after that, he lived another 430 years and had other children.

¹⁸When Peleg was 30 years old, he had a son, Reu; ¹⁹after that, he lived another 209 years and had other children.

²⁰When Reu was 32 years old, he had a son, Serug; ²¹after that, he lived another 207 years and had other children.

²²When Serug was 30 years old, he had a son, Nahor; ²³after that, he lived another 200 years and had other children.

²⁴When Nahor was 29 years old, he had a son, Terah; ²⁵after that, he lived another 119 years and had other children.

²⁶After Terah was 70 years old, he became the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran.

The Descendants of Terah

²⁷These are the descendants of Terah, who was the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran. Haran was the father of Lot, ²⁸and Haran died in his native city, Ur in Babylonia, while his father was still living. ²⁹Abram married Sarai, and Nahor married Milcah, the daughter of Haran, who was also the father of Iscah. ³⁰Sarai was not able to have children.

³¹Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot, who was the son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, Abram’s wife, and with them he left the city of Ur in Babylonia to go to the land of Canaan. They went as far as Haran and settled there. ³²Terah died there at the age of 205.