Genesis 11:1-13 ▼

1 There was a time when the entire earth spoke a common language with an identical vocabulary.

2 As people migrated westward, they came across a plain in the region of Shinar and settled there.

3 They told each other, |Come on! Let's burn bricks thoroughly.| They used bricks for stone and tar for mortar.

4 Then they said, |Come on! Let's build ourselves a city and a tower, with its summit in the heavens, and let's make a name for ourselves so we won't be scattered over the surface of the whole earth.|

5 However, the LORD descended to look over the city and the tower that the humans were building.

6 The LORD said, |Look! They are one people with the same language for all of them, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. Nothing that they have a mind to do will be impossible for them!

7 Come on! Let's go down there and confuse their language, so that they won't understand each other's speech.|

8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the surface of the whole earth, so that they had to stop building the city.

9 Therefore it was called Babylon, because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth, and from there the LORD scattered them over the surface of the entire earth.

10 These are the family records of Shem. When Shem had lived 100 years, he fathered Arpachshad two years after the flood.

11 Shem lived 500 years after he fathered Arpachshad and had other sons and daughters.

12 When Arpachshad had lived 35 years, he fathered Cainan.

13 After he fathered Cainan, Arpachshad lived 430 years and had other sons and daughters, and then died. Cainan lived 130 years and fathered Shelah. After he fathered Shelah, Cainan lived 330 years and had other sons and daughters, and then died.