Genesis 11:2-12

2 As people moved toward the east, they found a plain in Shinar [Babylonia] and settled there.

3 They said to one another, "Let's make bricks and bake them thoroughly." They used bricks as stones and tar as mortar.

4 Then they said, "Let's build a city for ourselves and a tower with its top in the sky. Let's make a name for ourselves so that we won't become scattered all over the face of the earth."

5 The LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the descendants of Adam were building.

6 The LORD said, "They are one people with one language. This is only the beginning of what they will do! Now nothing they plan to do will be too difficult for them.

7 Let us go down there and mix up their language so that they won't understand each other."

8 So the LORD scattered them all over the face of the earth, and they stopped building the city.

9 This is why it was named Babel, because there the LORD turned the language of the whole earth into babble. From that place the LORD scattered them all over the face of the earth.

10 This is the account of Shem and his descendants. Two years after the flood when Shem was 100 years old, he became the father of Arpachshad.

11 After he became the father of Arpachshad, Shem lived 500 years and had other sons and daughters.

12 Arpachshad was 35 years old when he became the father of Shelah.

Genesis 11:2-12 Meaning and Commentary

INTRODUCTION TO GENESIS 11

This chapter gives an account of the inhabitants of the earth before the confusion of tongues at Babel, of their speech and language, which was one and the same, and of the place where they dwelt, Ge 11:1,2 and of their design to build a city and tower, to make them a name and keep them together, which they put in execution, Ge 11:3,4 of the notice the Lord took of this affair, and of the method he took to put a stop to their designs, by confounding their speech, and dispersing them abroad upon the face of the earth, Ge 11:5-9 then follows a genealogy of Shem's posterity down to Abraham, Ge 11:10-26 and a particular relation is given of Terah, the father of Abraham, and his family, and of his going forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees, in order to go into the land of Canaan, and of his death at Haran by the way, Ge 11:27-32.