4 And they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.” 5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. 6 And the Lord said, “Indeed the people are one and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do; now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from 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 all the earth, and they ceased building the city. 9 Therefore its name is called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth. In the old testament, God was such a jerk. edit: My favorite of the images is from Charles Jos BivianoThe Tower of Babel (/ˈbæbəl/ or /ˈbeɪbəl/; Hebrew: מִגְדַּל בָּבֶל, Migddal Bāḇēl) is a story told in the Book of Genesis of the Tanakh (also referred to as the Hebrew Bible) meant to explain the origin of different languages. According to the story, a united humanity of the generations following the Great Flood, speaking a single language and migrating from the east, came to the land of Shinar (Hebrew: שנער). As the King James version of the Bible puts it: