Genesis 11:1-9

New International Reader's Version

The Tower of Babel

11 The whole world had only one language, and everyone spoke it. ² They moved to the east and found a broad valley in Babylon. There they made their home.

³ They said to one another, “Come on! Let’s make bricks and bake them well.” They used bricks instead of stones. They used tar to hold the bricks together. ⁴ Then they said, “Come on! Let’s build a city for ourselves. Let’s build a tower that reaches to the sky. We’ll make a name for ourselves. Then we won’t be scattered over the whole earth.”

⁵ But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. ⁶ He said, “All these people are united and speak the same language. That is why they can do all this. Now they will be able to do anything they plan. ⁷ Come on! Let us go down and mix up their language. Then they will not be able to understand one another.”

⁸ So the Lord scattered them from there over the whole earth. And they stopped building the city. ⁹ There the Lord mixed up the language of the whole world. That’s why the city was called Babel. From there the Lord scattered them over the whole earth.