Genesis 11:1-9 ▼

1 The whole earth had the same language and vocabulary.

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

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

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

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

9 Therefore 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.