Genesis 11:2-9 ▼

2 and it comes to pass, in their journeying from the east, that they find a valley in the land of Shinar and dwell there;

3 and they each say to his neighbor, “Give help, let us make bricks, and burn [them] thoroughly”: and the brick is to them for stone, and the bitumen has been to them for mortar.

4 And they say, “Give help, let us build for ourselves a city and tower with its head in the heavens, and make for ourselves a name, lest we be scattered over the face of all the earth.”

5 And YHWH comes down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men have built;

6 and YHWH says, “Behold, the people [is] one, and one language [is] to them all, and this it has dreamed of doing; and now, nothing is restrained from them of that which they have purposed to do.

7 Give help, let us go down there and confuse their language, so that a man will not understand the language of his companion.”

8 And YHWH scatters them from there over the face of all the earth, and they cease to build the city;

9 therefore [one] has called its name Babel, for there YHWH has confused the language of all the earth, and from there YHWH has scattered them over the face of all the earth.