The
Tower of Babel ( or ; ,
Migddal Bāḇēl) is an
etiological myth in the
Book of Genesis of the
Tanakh (also referred to as the
Hebrew Bible or the
Old Testament) 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 . There they agreed to build a city and tower; seeing this, God confounded their speech so that they could no longer understand each other and scattered them around the world.