The Tower of Babel — Bible story for kids

Long after the flood, the people of the earth shared one language. Everyone used the same words, so they could easily understand one another. As the people traveled eastward together, they came to a wide plain in the land of Shinar. There they decided to settle.

Babel was in the kingdom of Nimrod, a mighty ruler mentioned in Scripture. The Bible does not say that Nimrod designed the tower. It tells us that the people spoke to one another and made their proud plan together.

“Come,” they said. “Let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.”

The people used bricks instead of stone. They used sticky bitumen instead of ordinary mortar. Then they said, “Come, let’s build ourselves a city and a tower whose top reaches to the sky. Let’s make a name for ourselves, so that we won’t be scattered abroad on the surface of the whole earth.”

They wanted to be great and famous. They wanted to keep themselves together by their own strength. So the builders worked side by side. They shaped the bricks, baked them hard, and joined them with bitumen. The city spread across the plain, and the tower rose higher and higher.

But no tower could ever place people beyond God’s sight. The Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building.

God saw that they were one people with one language. Because they could all understand one another, they could join together in carrying out their proud purpose. Their unity was powerful, but they were using it for the wrong reason.

The Lord said, “Come, let’s go down, and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.”

Suddenly, the builders could no longer understand everyone around them. Familiar words sounded strange. One worker spoke, but another did not know what he meant. The people could not continue working together as they had before.

The building stopped. The Lord scattered the people from Shinar across the face of the earth. They traveled away in different directions, and their unfinished city and tower were left behind on the plain.

The place was called Babel because there the Lord confused the language of the whole earth. The people had tried to make their own name great, but God showed that human pride cannot climb up to heaven. God rules over every city, every nation, and every language.

Much later, at Pentecost, God helped people from many lands understand the good news about Jesus in their own languages. At Babel, proud people were scattered. At Pentecost, God began gathering people together through faith in him.