The Tower of Babel

At that time, everyone on earth shared the same language and could understand each other. As people travelled east, they came to a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.

They began a building project. They made bricks and baked them thoroughly, using tar as mortar. Then they planned to build a city for themselves, with a tower reaching towards the sky. They wanted to make a name for themselves and avoid being scattered over the earth.

The Lord came down to look at the city and the tower the people were building. He saw that they were one people with one language, and that this was only the beginning of what they planned to do together.

Then the Lord said he would confuse their language so they would no longer understand one another's speech. This was God's answer to what they were doing there together.

So the people stopped building the city, and from that place the Lord scattered them across the whole earth. The place was called Babel because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth. The people feared being scattered, but from there God spread them abroad.