The Tower of Babel
After the flood, the whole earth spoke one language and used the same words. As people moved eastward, they settled on a plain in the land of Shinar. There, they said to one another, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth."
They baked bricks and used tar for mortar, and began to build their city and tower. But the LORD came down to see what they were doing, and said, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them." So God confused their language, so that they could no longer understand one another, and scattered them from there over all the earth.
The people stopped building the city, and it was named Babel, because that is where the LORD confused the language of the whole world. What had begun as an attempt to reach the heavens through human pride ended instead with humanity spread across the earth, speaking many different languages -- a reminder that true unity comes not from human ambition, but from humbly trusting God's plans.
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See the full scripture text this story is based on.
- 11:1And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.
- 11:2And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.
- 11:3And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter.
- 11:4And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.
- 11:5And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.
- 11:6And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.
- 11:7Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.
- 11:8So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.
- 11:9Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.
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