1 At first, the people who lived at that time were living in different places but they all spoke the same language. 2 They lived in the east, and as they wandered around they found a flat place called Babylonia and they stayed there.

3 Then those people talked about building houses. They said, “Let us make some houses out of mud.” So they wet some mud with water and made bricks and put them in the hot sun until they became hard. And they got some sticky tar. They put the bricks down one by one, and put some tar in between them so that the houses would be strong. And so they made their mud houses.

4 Then they said, “Come on, let us make a lot of houses. And let us make one very tall one. It won't be like these others, it will be really tall. Let us make it so tall it will reach the sky. We want to show each other that we are strong, and also show our grandchildren that their grandfathers were good at work and very clever. Let us do this now so that we won't live all over the country, but all together in one place.”

5 Then the people made many small houses and one very high tower. And Yahweh came down to see them. 6 “They are all one people,” he said, “and they speak one language. First they have made this tower, and soon they will be doing other things. They will go on doing more and more things, whatever they want to do.

7 “Let us go down and mix up their language so that they won't understand each other.”

8 And Yahweh went down and mixed up their language and sent them all over the world. So the people stopped building the city. 9 They called the city Babylon because Yahweh mixed up their language there and Babylon means “he mixed up the language.” And so Yahweh sent the people all over the world and they didn't know each other any more.

10 This is about Shem's descendants. After the flood two years went by and then Shem was 100 years old and he had a son called Arpachshad. 11 After that he lived another 500 years and had other children.

12 When Arpachshad was 35 years old, he had a son called Shelah. 13 After that, he lived another 403 years and had other children.

14 When Shelah was 30 years old, he had a son called Eber. 15 After that, he lived another 403 years and had other children.

16 When Eber was 34 years old, he had a son called Peleg. 17 After that, he lived another 430 years and had other children.

18 When Peleg was 30 years old, he had a son called Reu. 19 After that, he lived another 209 years and had other children.

20 When Reu was 32 years old, he had a son called Serug. 21 After that, he lived another 207 years and had other children.

22 When Serug was 30 years old, he had a son called Nahor. 23 After that, he lived another 200 years and had other children.

24 When Nahor was 29 years old, he had a son called Terah. 25 After that, he lived another 119 years and had other children.

26 After Terah was 70 years old, he had three sons called Abram, Nahor and Haran.

27 These are the descendants of Terah. His three sons were Abram, Nahor and Haran. Haran had a son called Lot, 28 and Haran died in Ur, the city where he was born. Ur was in the country of Babylonia. Haran died there while his father Terah was still alive. 29 Abram had a wife, Sarai, who was his younger sister but she had a different mother. People used to marry their sisters like that in that country. Nahor's wife was Milcah, Haran's daughter. Haran had another son called Iscah. 30 Sarai was not able to have children.

31 Terah took his son Abram and his grandson Lot, the one whose father Haran had died, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, Abram's wife, and they left the city of Ur to go to the land of Canaan.

Some time later they reached a city called Haran and they stayed there. 32 The old man Terah, Abram's father, died in that city when he was 205 years old.