Chapter 11
Drafted by Grok 4.7 on 8 October 2026. First draft. Not independently reviewed. Leningrad Codex, through the Open Scriptures Westminster Leningrad Codex. The written consonants are printed. A Masoretic reading is footnoted when it differs. No Dead Sea reading was substituted unless it was read from a fragment. The Samaritan Pentateuch and the Greek, Syriac, and Latin versions are witnesses, not the default.
1The whole earth was one language and one set of words.
2When they traveled from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.
3They said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They had brick for stone, and they had asphalt for mortar.
4They said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the sky, and let us make a name for ourselves, so that we are not scattered over the face of the whole earth.”
5Yahweh came down to see the city and the tower that the humans had built.
6Yahweh said, “Look, one people, and one language for all of them, and this is what they have started to do. Now nothing they plan to do will be out of their reach.
7Come, let us go down and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s language.”
8Yahweh scattered them from there over the face of the whole earth, and they stopped building the city.
9Therefore its name was called Babel, because there Yahweh confused the language of the whole earth, and from there Yahweh scattered them over the face of the whole earth.
Notes (1)Hide notes
- Translation
Balal is “he confused.” Babel is the city’s name. The sentence puts the two next to each other.
10These are the generations of Shem. Shem was one hundred years old and fathered Arpachshad, two years after the flood.
11Shem lived five hundred years after he fathered Arpachshad, and he fathered sons and daughters.
12Arpachshad lived thirty-five years and fathered Shelah.
13Arpachshad lived four hundred and three years after he fathered Shelah, and he fathered sons and daughters.
14Shelah lived thirty years and fathered Eber.
15Shelah lived four hundred and three years after he fathered Eber, and he fathered sons and daughters.
16Eber lived thirty-four years and fathered Peleg.
17Eber lived four hundred and thirty years after he fathered Peleg, and he fathered sons and daughters.
18Peleg lived thirty years and fathered Reu.
19Peleg lived two hundred and nine years after he fathered Reu, and he fathered sons and daughters.
20Reu lived thirty-two years and fathered Serug.
21Reu lived two hundred and seven years after he fathered Serug, and he fathered sons and daughters.
22Serug lived thirty years and fathered Nahor.
23Serug lived two hundred years after he fathered Nahor, and he fathered sons and daughters.
24Nahor lived twenty-nine years and fathered Terah.
25Nahor lived one hundred and nineteen years after he fathered Terah, and he fathered sons and daughters.
26Terah lived seventy years and fathered Abram, Nahor, and Haran.
27These are the generations of Terah. Terah fathered Abram, Nahor, and Haran, and Haran fathered Lot.
28Haran died in the presence of Terah his father, in the land of his birth, in Ur of the Chaldeans.
29Abram and Nahor took wives for themselves. The name of Abram’s wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor’s wife was Milcah, the daughter of Haran, the father of Milcah and the father of Iscah.
30Sarai was barren. She had no child.
31Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran, his grandson, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, the wife of Abram his son, and they went out with them from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to the land of Canaan. They came as far as Haran and settled there.
32The days of Terah were two hundred and five years, and Terah died in Haran.