Genesis 11:2-9 ▼

2 And as people journeyed eastward (from the east), they found a plain in the land of Shinar (Babylonia) and settled there.

3 And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” So they used brick instead of stone, and tar instead of mortar.

4 “Come,” they said, “let us build for ourselves a city with a tower that reaches to the heavens, that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of all the earth.”

5 Then the LORD {YHWH} came down to see the city and the tower that the sons of men were building.

6 And the LORD {YHWH} said, “If they have begun to do this as one people speaking the same language, then nothing they devise will be beyond them.

7 Come, let Us go down and confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.”

8 So the LORD {YHWH} scattered them from there over the face of all the earth, and they stopped building the city.

9 That is why it is called Babel (Babylon), for there the LORD {YHWH} confused the language of the whole world, and from that place the LORD scattered them over the face of all the earth.