1 Now the whole world had one language and a common form of speech.
2 And as people journeyed eastward, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.
3 And 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.”
5 Then the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the sons of men were building.
6 And 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.
7 Come, let Us go down and confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.”
8 So the LORD scattered them from there over the face of all the earth, and they stopped building the city.
9 That 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.