₁When the day of Pentecost came, all the believers were gathered together in one place. ₂Suddenly there was a noise from the sky which sounded like a strong wind blowing, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. ₃Then they saw what looked like tongues of fire which spread out and touched each person there. ₄They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to talk in other languages, as the Spirit enabled them to speak.

₅There were Jews living in Jerusalem, religious people who had come from every country in the world. ₆When they heard this noise, a large crowd gathered. They were all excited, because each one of them heard the believers speaking in his or her own language. ₇In amazement and wonder they exclaimed, “These people who are talking like this are Galileans! ₈How is it, then, that all of us hear them speaking in our own native languages? ₉We are from Parthia, Media, and Elam; from Mesopotamia, Judea, and Cappadocia; from Pontus and Asia, ₁₀from Phrygia and Pamphylia, from Egypt and the regions of Libya near Cyrene. Some of us are from Rome, ₁₁both Jews and Gentiles converted to Judaism, and some of us are from Crete and Arabia — yet all of us hear them speaking in our own languages about the great things that God has done!” ₁₂Amazed and confused, they kept asking each other, “What does this mean?”

₁₃But others made fun of the believers, saying, “These people are drunk!”

₁₄Then Peter stood up with the other eleven apostles and in a loud voice began to speak to the crowd: “Fellow-Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, listen to me and let me tell you what this means. ₁₅These people are not drunk, as you suppose; it is only nine o'clock in the morning. ₁₆Instead, this is what the prophet Joel spoke about:

₁At first, the people of the whole world had only one language and used the same words. ₂As they wandered about in the East, they came to a plain in Babylonia and settled there. ₃They said to one another, “Come on! Let's make bricks and bake them hard.” So they had bricks to build with and tar to hold them together. ₄They said, “Now let's build a city with a tower that reaches the sky, so that we can make a name for ourselves and not be scattered all over the earth.”

₅Then the LORD came down to see the city and the tower which those men had built, ₆and he said, “Now then, these are all one people and they speak one language; this is just the beginning of what they are going to do. Soon they will be able to do anything they want! ₇Let us go down and mix up their language so that they will not understand one another.” ₈So the LORD scattered them all over the earth, and they stopped building the city. ₉The city was called Babylon, because there the LORD mixed up the language of all the people, and from there he scattered them all over the earth.