The Tower of Babel

11 Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. ² And as they migrated from the east,^[a] they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.^{(A) 3} And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and fire them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone and bitumen for mortar. ⁴ Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.”^{(B) 5} The Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which mortals had built.^{(C) 6} And the Lord said, “Look, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.^{(D) 7} Come, let us go down and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.”^{(E) 8} So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city.^{(F) 9} Therefore it was called Babel,^[b] because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth, and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.^(G)

Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch

²⁶ Then an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Get up and go toward the south^[a] to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” (This is a wilderness road.)^{(A) 27} So he got up and went. Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Candace, the queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury. He had come to Jerusalem to worship^{(B) 28} and was returning home; seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah. ²⁹ Then the Spirit said to Philip, “Go over to this chariot and join it.”^{(C) 30} So Philip ran up to it and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah. He asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” ³¹ He replied, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him. ³² Now the passage of the scripture that he was reading was this:

³⁴ The eunuch asked Philip, “About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?” ³⁵ Then Philip began to speak, and starting with this scripture he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus.^{(E) 36} As they were going along the road, they came to some water, and the eunuch said, “Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?”^{[b](F) 38} He commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip^[c] baptized him. ³⁹ When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away; the eunuch saw him no more and went on his way rejoicing.^{(G) 40} But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he was passing through the region he proclaimed the good news to all the towns until he came to Caesarea.