But the Lord came down(A) to see the city and the tower the people were building. The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language(B) they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us(C) go down(D) and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”(E)

So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth,(F) and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel[a](G)—because there the Lord confused the language(H) of the whole world.(I) From there the Lord scattered(J) them over the face of the whole earth.

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Footnotes

  1. Genesis 11:9 That is, Babylon; Babel sounds like the Hebrew for confused.

And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.

And 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.

Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.

So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.

Therefore 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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