The following is an English translation of a story from the Bible:
The Tower of Babel
After the flood, Noah and his family left the ark and settled in the land of Shinar. They decided to build a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, so that they might make a name for themselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.
Now the whole world had one language and one speech. As men moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar.
Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”
But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”
So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over all the earth.
This is the account of Shem, Ham and Japheth, Noah’s sons, and the descendants of each. Ham was the father of Canaan. These are the descendants of Ham:
The descendants of Japheth: Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Meshech, and Tiras. The sons of Javan were Elishah, Tarshish, the Kittites, the Rodanites, the Gergesites, and the Phoenicians.
From these the coastlands were separated into their territories, each according to its language, by their families, into their nations.
These are the families of the sons of Noah, according to their lines of descent, their nations, and from these the nations spread over the earth after the flood.
