1. And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.

2. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.

3. And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter.

4. And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.

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 the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.

10. These are the generations of Shem: Shem was an hundred years old, and begat Arphaxad two years after the flood:

11. And Shem lived after he begat Arphaxad five hundred years, and begat sons and daughters.

12. And Arphaxad lived five and thirty years, and begat Salah:

12. And Arphaxad lived after he begat Salah four hundred and three years, and begat sons and daughters.

14. And Salah lived thirty years, and begat Eber:

15. And Salah lived after he begat Eber four hundred and three years, and begat sons and daughters.

16. And Eber lived four and thirty years, and begat Peleg:

17. And Eber lived after he begat Peleg four hundred and thirty years, and begat sons and daughters.

18. And Peleg lived thirty years, and begat Reu:

19. And Peleg lived after he begat Reu two hundred and nine years, and begat sons and daughters.

20. And Reu lived two and thirty years, and begat Serug:

21. And Reu lived after he begat Serug two hundred and seven years, and begat sons and daughters.

22. And Serug lived thirty years, and begat Nahor:

23. And Serug lived after he begat Nahor two hundred years, and begat sons and daughters.

24. And Nahor lived nine and twenty years, and begat Terah:

25. And Nahor lived after he begat Terah an hundred and nineteen years, and begat sons and daughters.

26. And Terah lived seventy years, and begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran.

27. Now these are the generations of Terah: Terah begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran; and Haran begat Lot.

28. And Haran died before his father Terah in the land of his nativity, in Ur of the Chaldees.

29. And Abram and Nahor took them wives: the name of Abram's wife was Sarai; and the name of Nahor's wife, Milcah, the daughter of Haran, the father of Milcah, and the father of Iscah.

30. But Sarai was barren; she had no child.

31. And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran his son's son, and Sarai his daughter in law, his son Abram's wife; and they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan; and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there.

32. And the days of Terah were two hundred and five years: and Terah died in Haran.

1. And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speach.

2. And it came to passe as they iourneyed from the East, that they found a plaine in the land of Shinar, and they dwelt there.

3. And they sayd one to another; Goe to, let vs make bricke, and burne them thorowly. And they had bricke for stone, and slime had they for morter.

4. And they said; Goe to, let vs build vs a city and a tower, whose top may reach vnto heauen, and let vs make vs a name, lest we be scattered abroad vpon the face of the whole earth.

5. And the LORD came downe 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 haue all one language: and this they begin to doe: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they haue imagined to doe.

7. Goe to, let vs go downe, and there cōfound their language, that they may not vnderstand one anothers speech.

8. So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence, vpon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the Citie.

9. Therefore is the name of it called Babel, because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad vpon the face of all the earth.

10. These are the generations of Shem. Shem was an hundred yeres old, and begate Arphaxad two yeeres after the Flood.

11. And Shem liued, after he begate Arphaxad, fiue hundred yeeres, and begate sonnes and daughters.

12. And Arphaxad liued fiue and thirtie yeeres, and begate Salah.

13. And Arphaxad liued, after he begate Salah, foure hundred and three yeeres, and begate sonnes and daughters.

14. And Salah liued thirtie yeeres, and begate Eber.

15. And Salah liued, after hee begate Eber, foure hundred and three yeeres, and begate sonnes and daughters.

16. And Eber liued foure and thirty yeeres, and begate Peleg.

17. And Eber liued, after hee begate Peleg, foure hundred and thirtie yeres, and begate sonnes and daughters.

18. And Peleg liued thirtie yeeres, and begate Reu.

19. And Peleg liued, after hee begate Reu, two hundred and nine yeeres, and begate sonnes and daughters.

20. And Reu liued two and thirtie yeeres, and begate Serug.

21. And Reu liued, after hee begate Serug, two hundreth and seuen yeres, and begate sonnes and daughters.

22. And Serug liued thirtie yeeres, and begate Nahor.

23. And Serug liued, after he begate Nahor, two hundred yeeres, and begat sonnes and daughters.

24. And Nahor liued nine and twentie yeeres, and begate Terah.

25. And Nahor liued, after he begate Terah, an hundred & nineteene yeeres, and begate sonnes and daughters.

26. And Terah liued seuenty yeeres, and begate Abram, Nahor, & Haran.

27. Now these are the generations of Terah: Terah begate Abram, Nahor, and Haran: And Haran begate Lot.

28. And Haran died, before his father Terah in the land of his natiuity, in Ur of the Chaldees.

29. And Abram and Nahor tooke them wiues: the name of Abrams wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahors wife, Milcah, the daughter of Haran, the father of Milcah, and the father of Iscah.

30. But Sarai was barren; she had no childe.

31. And Terah tooke Abram his sonne, and Lot the sonne of Haran his sonnes sonne, and Sarai his daughter in lawe, his sonne Abrams wife, and they went foorth with them from Ur of the Chaldees, to goe into the land of Canaan: and they came vnto Haran, and dwelt there.

32. And the dayes of Terah, were two hundred and fiue yeres: and Terah died in Haran.

 

II == Gen 13:11 ; 2nd Sam 6:2 ; 1st Chr 13:6

 

 

 

 

 

IV == Deut 1:28

 

 

 

V == Gen 18:21

 

 

VI == Gen 9:19 ; 11:1 ; Ps 2:1 ; Acts 17:26

 

 

VII == Gen 1:26 ; 42:23 ; Deut 20:49 ; Ps 2:4 ; Jer 5:15 ; Acts 2:4-6 ; 1st Cor 14:2 , 11

VIII == Gen 10:25 , 32 ; Luke 1:51 IX == 1st Cor 14:23

 

 

 

 

 

X == Gen 10:22 ; 1st Chr 1:17

 

 

 

 

XII == Luke 3:36

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

XVI == 1st Chr 1:19 ; Luke 3:35

 

 

XX == Luke 3:35

 

 

 

XXIV == Luke 3:34

 

 

XXVI == Josh 24:2 ; 1st Chr 1:26

 

 

XXIX == Gen 17:15 ; 20:12 ; 22:20

 

XXX == Gen 16:1-2 ; 18:11-12

 

XXXI == Gen 10:19 ; 12:1 ; Neh 9:7 ; Acts 7:4

 

 

1 The whole world spoke the same language, using the same words.

2 While men were migrating in the east, they came upon a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there.

3 They said to one another, "Come, let us mold bricks and harden them with fire." They used bricks for stone, and bitumen for mortar.

4 Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the sky, and so make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered all over the earth."

5 LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men had built.

6 Then the LORD said: "If now, while they are one people, all speaking the same language, they have started to do this, nothing will later stop them from doing whatever they presume to do.

7 Let us then go down and there confuse their language, so that one will not understand what another says."

8 Thus the LORD scattered them from there all over the earth, and they stopped building the city.

9 That is why it was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the speech of all the world. It was from that place that he scattered them all over the earth.

10 This is the record of the descendants of Shem. When Shem was one hundred years old, he became the father of Arpachshad, two years after the flood.

11 Shem lived five hundred years after the birth of Arpachshad, and he had other sons and daughters.

12 When Arpachshad was thirty-five years old, he became the father of Shelah.

13 Arpachshad lived four hundred and three years after the birth of Shelah, and he had other sons and daughters.

14 When Shelah was thirty years old, he became the father of Eber.

15 Shelah lived four hundred and three years after the birth of Eber, and he had other sons and daughters.

16 When Eber was thirty-four years old, he became the father of Peleg.

17 Eber lived four hundred and thirty years after the birth of Peleg, and he had other sons and daughters.

18 When Peleg was thirty years old, he became the father of Reu.

19 Peleg lived two hundred and nine years after the birth of Reu, and he had other sons and daughters.

20 When Reu was thirty-two years old, he became the father of Serug.

21 Reu lived two hundred and seven years after the birth of Serug, and he had other sons and daughters.

22 When Serug was thirty years old, he became the father of Nahor.

23 Serug lived two hundred years after the birth of Nahor, and he had other sons and daughters.

24 When Nahor was twenty-nine years old, he became the father of Terah.

25 Nahor lived one hundred and nineteen years after the birth of Terah, and he had other sons and daughters.

26 When Terah was seventy years old, he became the father of Abram, Nahor and Haran.

27 This is the record of the descendants of Terah. Terah became the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran, and Haran became the father of Lot.

28 Haran died before his father Terah, in his native land, in Ur of the Chaldeans.

29 Abram and Nahor took wives; the name of Abram's wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor's wife was Milcah, daughter of Haran, the father of Milcah and Iscah.

30 Sarai was barren; she had no child.

31 Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot, son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, the wife of his son Abram, and brought them out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to go to the land of Canaan. But when they reached Haran, they settled there.

32 The lifetime of Terah was two hundred and five years; then Terah died in Haran.

1-9 "The ower of Babel being built was stopped temorarily but later those who remained in Babylonia resumed builting it. Babylon became a pattern for similar towers in other Babylonian cities and possibly the form of Pyramids in Egypt. The location of the tower is at Borsippa, 10 miles south west from the center of Babylon.Many archaeologists believe the actual site was in the center of Babylon, identified by the ruins just north of the Marduk Temple. Babel is now an hole 330 feet square, which is used to garther bricks from. "Sir Rawlinson found in a foundation corner in Borsippa a cylinder with this inscription: The tower of Borsippa, which a former king erected, and completed to a height of 42 cubits, whose summit he did not finish, fell to ruins in ancient times. There was no proper care of its gutters for the water; rain and storms had washed away its brick, and the tiles of its roof were broken. the great god Marduk urged me to restore it. I did not alter its site, or change its foundation walls. At a favorable time I renewed its brick work and its roofing tiles, and I wrote my name on the cornices of the edifice. I built it anew as it had been ages before; I erected its pinnacle as it was in remote days." {Page 83 Halley's Bible Handbook by H.H. Halley }

The whole world spoke one language and there was one race of people, Until they came to a plain in the land of Shinar and decide to dwelt there and build a building to place their false gods in. The words in verse four is in italics to show they are supplied by the translators and not of the original Hebrew text. The phrase should read "whose top is heaven" Archaeolgical evidence show a building among the ruins of ancient Babylon that is 153 ft high with a 400 ft base. It was constructed of dried bricks in seven stages, to correspon with the known planets. The lowermost was black, the color of Saturn, the next orange, for Jupiter, the third, red, for Mars, and so on. So the building was a building for worshiping false gods. So the Lord change the languages of the people so they couldn't speak to each other and the groups started to move away from the others with the different languages. So it was necissary to establish new familes composed of very close relatives, for several generations at least. It is well established genetically that variations take place very quickly in a small inbreeding poputation and very slowly in a large interbreeding population. In the small population, distinctive charachteristics of skin color, height, hair texture , facial features, temperament, environmental adjustment and other that would come to be associated with particular tribes and nations.

v 10-26. Shem put off starting a family, or God withheld it, until the flood and the adjustments were over. Some point out that “begot” means “became an ancestor of”, so many more years may have elapsed than what would appear on the surface. The line is carried from Shem to Abraham, covering 10 generations (427 years) Shem could of recorde this for his life spanned the period covered by it. On the other hand, this seems like a well knit genealogy, and difficult to refute. Notice declining age length to Terah. The important thing is, this is the line of Christ. v 26-28, The youngest of the three, God’s choice, is mentioned first. v 29-32. Here we see the family relationships, but in 20:12, we find that Sarai is Abram’s half sister. “She is the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother“. According to Hebrew terminology, she could actually be his niece and still be called his sister. It was no easy thing to leave Ur. It had as high a level of civilization as in Nebuchadnezzar’s time, a thousand years later. There was extensive commerce, middle class homes had two stories with ten to twenty rooms and some even had gravity fed running water and toilets. Students were taught in all subjects, including square and cube root. Some had piped in water systems, and wiring found in bitumen in a clay pot was probably for electroplating vases. Many assume that Abram was a herdsman, but his name is found on early Babylonian contracts, so he may have been fairly well to do. When he left this area, he may have given up this style of living,  The most direct route to Haran was about 600 miles up the Euphrates, but the most popular trade route was through Ninevah. It is possible that God appeared to both Terah and Abram. At least as head of the family, Terah saw the need to respond to Abram’s call. He delayed at Haran, so Abram went on. At this point, Haran is considered dead by Stephen, Acts 7:2-4, though he did not physically die until sixty years later. We see an illustration of this in Matt. 8:21,22, where the young man asked to be allowed to bury his father, when he was not even dead yet.
Though Haran died in the land of his nativity in Ur. his name and others in the area of Haran, cause some to wonder if his ancestors had lived there at one time and migrated to Ur. Maybe he even lived there a while.