Genesis 11:1-11

Now everyone at that time spoke a single language with one vocabulary. As people migrated eastward, they found a large plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. They said to one another, “Come, let’s unite together and make bricks of clay and burn them until they become hard.” So, they piled up the bricks they made to serve as stones and collected tar for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let’s begin work to build ourselves a city with a lofty tower that rises into the heavens. We’ll make a name for ourselves, a monument to us, instead of being scattered all over the earth.” But when YAHWEH came down to see the city and the tower which mortals had started building, he said, “If they have begun this as one people sharing a common language, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language and prevent them from understanding each other.” So YAHWEH scattered them over the entire earth, and they stopped building their city. That is why the city was called Babel—because it was there that YAHWEH confused the language of the whole world and from there the people were scattered over the face of the earth. These are the descendants of Shem. Two years after the flood, at the age of one hundred, Shem had a son named Arphaxad. And after Arphaxad was born, Shem lived another five hundred years and had other sons and daughters.