Genesis 11

₁Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. ₂As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.

₃They said to each other, ‘Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.’ They used brick instead of stone, and bitumen for mortar. ₄Then 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; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.’

₅But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. ₆The 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. ₇Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.’

₈So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. ₉That is why it was called Babel – because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

₁₀This is the account of Shem’s family line.

₂₇This is the account of Terah’s family line.

Terah became the father of Abram, Nahor and Haran. And Haran became the father of Lot. ₂₈While his father Terah was still alive, Haran died in Ur of the Chaldeans, in the land of his birth. ₂₉Abram and Nahor both married. The name of Abram’s wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor’s wife was Milkah; she was the daughter of Haran, the father of both Milkah and Iskah. ₃₀Now Sarai was childless because she was not able to conceive.

₃₁Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, the wife of his son Abram, and together they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan. But when they came to Harran, they settled there.

₃₂Terah lived 205 years, and he died in Harran.