Genesis 11:7

Come on, let’s go down to these people, and we will make them talk in different languages. Then they will not understand each other, and they will be all mixed up. They will not work things out with each other, so they will not keep on building this city.”

Plain English Version

In The King James Version

Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.

In Context

6He said, “These people can all talk to each other in the same language, so they can do anything they want. If they keep on going this way, nothing will stop them from doing anything.

8So God made all the people talk in different languages. None of them could understand anything the other people were saying. So they stopped building their big city.

Read all of Genesis 11

Cross References

Genesis 1:26Then God said, “We are going to make people. They will be like us. They will be boss over the fish and everything that lives in the sea, and they will be boss over the birds that fly in the sky, and they will be boss over all the animals that are on the land, the animals that are wild, and the animals that are not wild, and all the lizards, and insects, and other things that crawl around on the ground. People will be boss over all of them.”

Genesis 10:32That is the big list of all the families and tribes that were born into Noah’s family. They split up into their own nations, and they went everywhere after the big flood.

Genesis 42:23Joseph listened to his brothers, and he understood what they said, because he knew their language. But Joseph’s brothers didn’t know that he understood them. You see, Joseph always talked to his brothers in the Egypt language, then somebody else talked to them in their own language and told them what Joseph said. So they thought he only talked the Egypt language.

Psalms 2:4But God just looks down from heaven and laughs at them. He is the true boss. He knows that their plans are stupid.

Matthew Henry on Genesis 11:6-10

5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded. 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. 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… Read the whole commentary →

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Study Genesis 11:7