Genesis 11:1-9

¹The whole earth had a common language and a common vocabulary. ²When the people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. ³Then they said to one another, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” (They had brick instead of stone and tar instead of mortar.) ⁴Then they said, “Come, let’s build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens so that we may make a name for ourselves. Otherwise we will be scattered across the face of the entire earth.” ⁵But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the people had started building. ⁶And the Lord said, “If as one people all sharing a common language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be beyond them. ⁷Come, let’s go down and confuse their language so they won’t be able to understand each other.” ⁸So the Lord scattered them from there across the face of the entire earth, and they stopped building the city. ⁹That is why its name was called Babel – because there the Lord confused the language of the entire world, and from there the Lord scattered them across the face of the entire earth.