Genesis 11:2-9 ▼

2 When the people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.

3 Then they said to one another, |Come, let's make bricks and bake them thoroughly.| (They had brick instead of stone and tar instead of mortar.)

4 Then they said, |Come, let's build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens so that we may make a name for ourselves. Otherwise we will be scattered across the face of the entire earth.|

5 But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the people had started building.

6 And the LORD said, |If as one people all sharing a common language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be beyond them.

7 Come, let's go down and confuse their language so they won't be able to understand each other.|

8 So the LORD scattered them from there across the face of the entire earth, and they stopped building the city.

9 That is why its name was called Babel--because there the LORD confused the language of the entire world, and from there the LORD scattered them across the face of the entire earth.