1. At this time the whole world spoke one language. Everyone used the same words.
2. As people moved from the East, they found a plain in the land of Babylonia. They settled there to live.
3. They said to each other, “Let’s make bricks and bake them to make them hard.” So they used bricks instead of stones, and tar instead of mortar.
4. Then they said to each other, “Let’s build for ourselves a city and a tower. And let’s make the top of the tower reach high into the sky. We will become famous. If we do this, we will not be scattered over all the earth.”
5. The Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the people had built.
6. The Lord said, “Now, these people are united. They all speak the same language. This is only the beginning of what they will do. They will be able to do anything they want.
7. Come, let us go down and confuse their language. Then they will not be able to understand each other.”
8. So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth. And they stopped building the city.
9. That is where the Lord confused the language of the whole world. So the place is called Babel. So the Lord caused them to spread out from there over all the whole world.
10. This is the family history of Shem. Two years after the flood, when Shem was 100 years old, his son Arphaxad was born.
11. After that, Shem lived 500 years and had other sons and daughters.