1 And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.
Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father 19:32
11:1-91 And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.
Before the Tower of Babel was constructed, all humans spoke the same language. [1]
2 And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.
At this time, everyone on earth traveled to the plain of Shinar and lived there.
3 And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter.
4 And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.
They said to each other,
Let's get some brick and slime, and build a tower that reaches to heaven.
We need to make ourselves famous, so we aren't scattered all over the face of the earth.
5And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.
God came down to see the tower that the people had built. [2]
6 And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.
7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.
And he said to himself (themselves?):
These people are unified and have one language. If they can build a tower, they can do anything.
Let us go down and mess up their speech so they can't understand each other. [3]
8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.
9 Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.
11:10-2610These are the generations of Shem: Shem was an hundred years old, and begat Arphaxad two years after the flood:
11 And Shem lived after he begat Arphaxad five hundred years, and begat sons and daughters.
These are the generations of Shem. [4]
Shem lived 600 years.
12 And Arphaxad lived five and thirty years, and begat Salah:
13 And Arphaxad lived after he begat Salah four hundred and three years, and begat sons and daughters.
14 And Salah lived thirty years, and begat Eber:
15 And Salah lived after he begat Eber four hundred and three years, and begat sons and daughters.
16 And Eber lived four and thirty years, and begat Peleg:
17 And Eber lived after he begat Peleg four hundred and thirty years, and begat sons and daughters.
Eber lived 464 years.
18 And Peleg lived thirty years, and begat Reu:
19 And Peleg lived after he begat Reu two hundred and nine years, and begat sons and daughters.
Peleg lived 239 years.
20 And Reu lived two and thirty years, and begat Serug:
21 And Reu lived after he begat Serug two hundred and seven years, and begat sons and daughters.
Reu lived 239 years.
22 And Serug lived thirty years, and begat Nahor:
23 And Serug lived after he begat Nahor two hundred years, and begat sons and daughters.
Serug lived 229 years.
24 And Nahor lived nine and twenty years, and begat Terah:
25 And Nahor lived after he begat Terah an hundred and nineteen years, and begat sons and daughters.
Nahor lived 148 years.
26 And Terah lived seventy years, and begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran.
11:27-3227 Now these are the generations of Terah: Terah begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran; and Haran begat Lot.
28 And Haran died before his father Terah in the land of his nativity, in Ur of the Chaldees.
29 And Abram and Nahor took them wives: the name of Abram's wife was Sarai; and the name of Nahor's wife, Milcah, the daughter of Haran, the father of Milcah, and the father of Iscah.
30 But Sarai was barren; she had no child.
Abraham married Sarah, who could not have children. [8]
And Abraham's brother, Nahor, married his niece, Milcah, the daughter of his brother Haran. [9]
31 And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran his son's son, and Sarai his daughter in law, his son Abram's wife; and they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan; and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there.
Terah, Abraham, Sarah, and Lot traveled from Ur of the Chaldees to Haran. [10]
32 And the days of Terah were two hundred and five years: and Terah died in Haran.
Terah died in Haran when he was 205 years old.
This could not be true, of course, since by this time (supposedly around 2400 BCE) there were already many languages, each unintelligible to the others.
This is even admitted earlier in Genesis (10:5, 20, 31) where other languages are mentioned before the tower of Babel was supposedly constructed.
Couldn't God see the tower from where he was sitting?
Maybe God hasn't been talking to himself; maybe there is more than one of them up there.
Well, however many there may be, they all decide to come down to confuse the builders by confounding human language and scattering them [humans] abroad.
Another boring genealogy that we are told to avoid in 1 Tim 1:4 and Titus 3:9. ("Avoid foolish questions and genealogies.")
Also note the ridiculously long lives of the patriarchs.
Who was Abraham's father? Azar or Terah (Quran 6:74)? Which is right, the Bible or the Quran?
How old was Terah when he died?
"Ur of the Chaldees" is probably a reference to the city of Ur in southern Mesopotamia, in present-day Iraq.
More Genesis family values: Abraham's brother, Nahaor, married his niece.
Did God call Abraham before or after he moved to Haran?
Haran is usually identified with a town in modern-day Turkey.
Slate Blogs the Bible by David Plotz
Hey, you wanna know what would be cool? Let's build a tower so high that it reaches the heavens! And so, a bunch of people did, which apparently pissed off God so much, that he decided to scramble everyone's languages. And there's our biblical explanation as to why there are so many languages in the world. It's a bad explanation, but that isn't important.
We get yet another geneology, but thankfully this one isn't chapter-long, and at this point, we are introduced to Abram/Abraham, Lot, and Sarai/Sarah. Get used to them, because we're gonna be following them for the following chapters.
There’s some fun family values here. Nahor married his niece, Milcah. (v.27-29) Can this family go one generation without committing incest!?
Good point. I've added vv.27-29 to family values.
Thanks.