Genesis 11:2-12

2 And it came to pass as they moved from the east, they found a plain in the land of Senaar, and they dwelt there.

3 And a man said to his neighbour, Come, let us make bricks and bake them with fire. And the brick was to them for stone, and their mortar was bitumen.

4 And they said, Come, let us build to ourselves a city and tower, whose top shall be to heaven, and let us make to ourselves a name, before we are scattered abroad upon the face of all the earth.

5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the sons of men built.

6 And the Lord said, Behold, one race, and one lip of all, and they have begun to do this, and now nothing shall fail from them of all that they may have undertaken to do.

7 Come, and having gone down let us there confound their tongue, that they may not understand each the voice of his neighbour.

8 And the Lord scattered them thence over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city and the tower.

9 On this account its name was called Confusion, because there the Lord confounded the languages of all the earth, and thence the Lord scattered them upon the face of all the earth.

10 And these the generations of Sem: and Sem was a hundred years old when he begot Arphaxad, the second year after the flood.

11 And Sem lived, after he had begotten Arphaxad, five hundred years, and begot sons and daughters, and died.

12 And Arphaxad lived a hundred and thirty-five years, and begot Cainan.

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.