Genesis 11:1-10

The Tower of Babel

1 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech.
2 As people moved eastward,[a] they found a plain in Shinar[b] and settled there.
3 They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar.
4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”
5 But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower the people were building.
6 The LORD 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.
7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”
8 So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city.
9 That is why it was called Babel[c] —because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

From Shem to Abram

10 This is the account of Shem’s family line. Two years after the flood, when Shem was 100 years old, he became the father[d] of Arphaxad.

Cross References 21

  • 1. ver 6
  • 2. S Genesis 10:10
  • 3. Exodus 1:14; Exodus 5:7; Jeremiah 43:9
  • 4. Isaiah 9:10; Amos 5:11
  • 5. Genesis 14:10
  • 6. Deuteronomy 1:28; Deuteronomy 6:10; Deuteronomy 9:1; Job 20:6; Jeremiah 51:53
  • 7. Genesis 6:4
  • 8. Deuteronomy 30:3; 1 Kings 22:17; Esther 3:8; Psalms 44:11; Jeremiah 31:10; Jeremiah 40:15; Ezekiel 6:8; Joel 3:2
  • 9. S Genesis 9:19; Deuteronomy 4:27
  • 10. ver 7; Genesis 18:21; Exodus 3:8; Exodus 19:11,18,20; Psalms 18:9; Psalms 144:5
  • 11. S ver 1
  • 12. S Genesis 1:26
  • 13. S ver 5
  • 14. Genesis 42:23; Deuteronomy 28:49; Isaiah 28:11; Isaiah 33:19; Jeremiah 5:15; 1 Corinthians 14:2,11
  • 15. S Genesis 9:19; Deuteronomy 32:8; S Luke 1:51
  • 16. S Genesis 10:10
  • 17. Psalms 55:9
  • 18. Acts 2:5-11
  • 19. Isaiah 2:10,21; Isaiah 13:14; Isaiah 24:1
  • 20. S Genesis 2:4
  • 21. Luke 3:36

Footnotes 4

  • [a]. Or "from the east" ; or "in the east"
  • [b]. That is, Babylonia
  • [c]. That is, Babylon; "Babel" sounds like the Hebrew for "confused" .
  • [d]. "Father" may mean "ancestor" ; also in verses 11-25.
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