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Yahweh said, “Behold, they are one people, and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do. Now nothing will be withheld from them, which they intend to do. Come, let’s go down, and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.” So Yahweh scattered them abroad from there on the surface of all the earth. They stopped building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel, because there Yahweh confused the language of all the earth. From there, Yahweh scattered them abroad on the surface of all the earth.

10 This is the history of the generations of Shem: Shem was one hundred years old when he became the father of Arpachshad two years after the flood. 11 Shem lived five hundred years after he became the father of Arpachshad, and became the father of more sons and daughters.

12 Arpachshad lived thirty-five years and became the father of Shelah.

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And the Lord said, Behold, they are one people and they have [a]all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do, and now nothing they have imagined they can do will be impossible for them.

Come, let Us go down and there confound (mix up, confuse) their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.

So the Lord scattered them abroad from that place upon the face of the whole earth, and they gave up building the city.

Therefore the name of it was called Babel—because there the Lord confounded the language of all the earth; and from that place the Lord scattered them abroad upon the face of the whole earth.

10 This is the history of the generations of Shem. Shem was 100 years old when he became the father of Arpachshad, two years after the flood.

11 And Shem lived after Arpachshad was born 500 years and had other sons and daughters.

12 When Arpachshad had lived 35 years, he became the father of Shelah.

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Footnotes

  1. Genesis 11:6 Some noted philologists have declared that a common origin of all languages cannot be denied. One, Max Mueller (The Science of Language), said “We have examined all possible forms which language can assume, and now we ask, can we reconcile with these three distinct forms, the radical, the terminational, the inflectional, the admission of one common origin of human speech? I answer decidedly, ‘Yes’.” The New Bible Commentary says, “The original unity of human language, though still far from demonstrable, becomes increasingly probable.”