Common English Bible CEB
New Revised Standard NRS
1 All people on the earth had one language and the same words.
1
Now the whole earth had one language and the same words.
2 When they traveled east, they found a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there.
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And as they migrated from the east, they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.
3 They said to each other, "Come, let's make bricks and bake them hard." They used bricks for stones and asphalt for mortar.
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And they said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly." And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar.
4 They said, "Come, let's build for ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the sky, and let's make a name for ourselves so that we won't be dispersed over all the earth."
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Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth."
5 Then the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the humans built.
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The Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which mortals had built.
6 And the LORD said, "There is now one people and they all have one language. This is what they have begun to do, and now all that they plan to do will be possible for them.
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And the Lord said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.
7 Come, let's go down and mix up their language there so they won't understand each other's language."
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Come, let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another's speech."
8 Then the LORD dispersed them from there over all of the earth, and they stopped building the city.
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So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city.
9 Therefore, it is named Babel, because there the LORD mixed up the language of all the earth; and from there the LORD dispersed them over all the earth.
9
Therefore it was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.
Copyright © 2011 Common English Bible
New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.