[1] Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. [2] As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. [3] They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. [4] Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.” [5] But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. [6] The LORD said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. [7] Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.” [8] So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. [9] That is why it was called Babel—because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth.
