After the great flood, Noah's sons and their descendants multiplied upon the earth. In those days, the whole earth had one language and the same words.

The men journeyed from the east and found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they settled there. They understood one another perfectly, for everyone spoke the same language.

One day, the men said to one another:

"Let us make bricks and bake them in the fire."

They used bricks instead of stone, and tar instead of mortar. The men were clever and skillful, and they had learned to make strong, lasting bricks. But then a prideful idea rose up among them. They said:

They wanted to be famous. They wanted to make something so great that everyone would remember them, and to show the world how powerful they were. In their pride, they wanted to be like God, reaching heaven by their own strength. They forgot that all their strength and cleverness came from God, and they forgot to be humble and grateful. They thought only of their own glory.

And so they began to build. Day after day, the tower grew, higher and higher, more and more imposing. The men worked together, all with the same goal: they made thousands of bricks, carried heavy loads, climbed up and down without rest. And as the tower rose, their pride rose with it.

"See how powerful we are," they said. "Nothing is impossible for us. We will reach heaven itself."

They thought they could do everything without God, that they did not need Him. All that effort was for their own glory, and not for the glory of God.

The Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the children of men were building. And the Lord said:

God saw that the hearts of the men were full of pride. They were united not for good, but to set themselves up against God. If they went on like this, their pride would only grow, and they would drift further and further from Him.

God, in His wisdom, decided to step in. Not out of cruelty, but out of mercy: He wanted to keep the men from losing themselves completely in their own pride.

Suddenly, something extraordinary happened. The men working on the tower began to speak different languages. One would say something, and the other could no longer understand. Words that had been clear turned into strange sounds.

"What did you say?" one would ask.

"I can't understand you," another would answer.

"Why are you talking in such a strange way?" a third would wonder.

Each one now spoke a different language, and no one understood anyone anymore.

The confusion was complete. How could they keep building, if they could not communicate? How could they work together, without understanding each other's instructions? The building stopped, and the great tower stood unfinished, pointing at the sky.

So the Lord scattered them from that place over the face of all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was named Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the inhabitants of the earth, and from there He scattered them across the world.

The groups who spoke the same language gathered together, and each group set out in a different direction. Some went north, others south; some east, others west. Each group became its own people, with its own language and its own customs. That is how the different languages and nations of the world began.

The tower was left abandoned, unfinished, reminding everyone that human pride cannot reach heaven. Only God is in heaven, and only He is worthy of all glory.