1. At first, the people of the whole world had only one language and used the same words.
2. As they wandered about in the East, they came to a plain in Babylonia and settled there.
3. They said to one another, “Come on! Let's make bricks and bake them hard.” So they had bricks to build with and tar to hold them together.
4. They said, “Now let's build a city with a tower that reaches the sky, so that we can make a name for ourselves and not be scattered all over the earth.”
5. Then the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which those men had built,
6. and he said, “Now then, these are all one people and they speak one language; this is just the beginning of what they are going to do. Soon they will be able to do anything they want!
7. Let us go down and mix up their language so that they will not understand one another.”
8. So the Lord scattered them all over the earth, and they stopped building the city.