The Tower of Babel is an important story in the Bible found in Genesis 11:1-9. This story teaches us about pride, cooperation, and the origin of different languages according to the Bible.
Building the Tower
Bible Verse: Genesis 11:3-4
“They said to each other, ‘Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.’… 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; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.'”
Long ago, everyone in the world spoke the same language. People decided to build a huge city with a tower that could reach the sky. They wanted to become famous and stay together rather than spread out over the Earth. They used bricks and tar to build this great tower.
God’s Response
Bible Verse: Genesis 11:5-7
“But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people 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.'”
God saw what the people were doing and was not pleased with their pride and desire to make a name for themselves. So, He decided to mix up their language. This way, they could not understand each other anymore.
The Result
Bible Verse: Genesis 11:8-9
“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 the face of the whole earth.”
Because the people couldn’t understand each other anymore, they stopped building the tower. They were scattered all over the world, and the city was called Babel. This is how, according to the Bible, different languages came to be.