The Tower of Babel

11 The whole world had only one language, and everyone spoke it. ² They moved to the east and found a broad valley in Babylon. There they made their home.

³ They said to one another, “Come on! Let’s make bricks and bake them well.” They used bricks instead of stones. They used tar to hold the bricks together. ⁴ Then they said, “Come on! Let’s build a city for ourselves. Let’s build a tower that reaches to the sky. We’ll make a name for ourselves. Then we won’t be scattered over the whole earth.”

⁵ But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. ⁶ He said, “All these people are united and speak the same language. That is why they can do all this. Now they will be able to do anything they plan. ⁷ Come on! Let us go down and mix up their language. Then they will not be able to understand one another.”

⁸ So the Lord scattered them from there over the whole earth. And they stopped building the city.

The Family Line of Abram

²⁷ Here is the story of Terah’s family line.

Terah became the father of Abram, Nahor and Haran. And Haran became the father of Lot. ²⁸ Haran died in the city of Ur in Babylonia, the land where he was born. Haran died while his father Terah was still alive. ²⁹ Abram and Nahor both got married. The name of Abram’s wife was Sarai. The name of Nahor’s wife was Milkah, the daughter of Haran. Haran was the father of Milkah and Iscah. ³⁰ But Sarai wasn’t able to have children.

³¹ Terah left Ur in Babylon. He took with him his son Abram and his grandson Lot, the son of Haran. Terah also took his daughter-in-law Sarai, the wife of his son Abram. All of them left together to go to Canaan. But when they came to Harran, they made their home there.