Genesis 11:1–9

¹Now the whole world had one language and a common form of speech. ²And as people journeyed eastward,^a they found a plain in the land of Shinar^b and settled there.

³And 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.”

⁵Then the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the sons of men were building. ⁶And the LORD said, “If they have begun to do this as one people speaking the same language, then nothing they devise will be beyond them. ⁷Come, let Us go down and confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.”

⁸So the LORD scattered them from there over the face of all the earth, and they stopped building the city. ⁹That is why it is called Babel,^c for there the LORD confused the language of the whole world, and from that place the LORD scattered them over the face of all the earth.