Genesis 11

¹Now the whole world had one language and a common form of speech.

²And as people journeyed eastward, they found a plain in the land of Shinar 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, 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.

¹⁰This is the account of Shem. Two years after the flood, when Shem was 100 years old, he became the father of Arphaxad.

¹¹And after he had become the father of Arphaxad, Shem lived 500 years and had other sons and daughters.

¹²When Arphaxad was 35 years old, he became the father of Shelah.