Genesis 11:1-9

Christian Standard Bible Anglicised

The Tower of Babylon

11 The whole earth had the same language and vocabulary. ² As people migrated from the east,^[a] they found a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there.^{(A) 3} They said to each other, ‘Come, let’s make oven-fired bricks.’ (They used brick for stone and bitumen^(B) for mortar.) ⁴ And they said, ‘Come, let’s build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the sky.^(C) Let’s make a name for ourselves; otherwise, we will be scattered throughout the earth.’

⁵ Then the Lord came down^(D) to look over the city and the tower that the humans^[b] were building. ⁶ The Lord said, ‘If they have begun to do this as one people all having the same language, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. ⁷ Come, let’s go down there and confuse their language so that they will not understand one another’s speech.’ ⁸ So from there the Lord scattered them throughout the earth,^(E) and they stopped building the city. ⁹ Therefore it is called Babylon,^[c][d](F) for there the Lord confused the language of the whole earth, and from there the Lord scattered them throughout the earth.