Online Texts for Craig White's Literature Courses

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The Tower of Babel


Genesis 11.1-9

 (New American Standard Bible)
(This story occurs in the Old Testament occurs following the Flood, and is sometimes used as a parable for the vanity of humanistic or worldly schemes to reform human society and thus contest Divine dispensation.)

1 Now the whole Earth used the same language and the same words.

2 And it came about as they journeyed east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.

3 And they said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly." And they used brick for stone, and they used tar for mortar.

4 And they said, "Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name; lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth."

5 And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built.

6 And the LORD said, "Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. And this is what they began to do, and now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them."

7 "Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another's speech."

8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of the whole earth; and they stopped building the city.

9 Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of the whole earth; and from there the LORD scattered them abroad over the face of the whole earth

 

 

 

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