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.