Genesis 11:2-9

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

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

4Then 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.”

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

6The 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.

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

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

9This 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.