He was a mighty hunter before the LORD: wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the LORD.
Nimrod was a hunter of men as well as beasts, a violent tyrant who pursued and subdued people to build dominion, and his standing before the Lord means in open defiance of God as the only King, not with divine approval. His widespread fame became a lasting proverb for overbearing tyranny and the measure for later oppressors. He was the first to claim kingship over men after the Flood, turning kindred tribes into a territorial state and empire, and founding Babel with Erech, Accad and Calneh in Shinar from which Assyria was colonized. He led united mankind in organized rebellion at Babel to make a name, reach heaven and secure one universal rule, until God confounded language, destroyed the tower and scattered the people. The Babylon he began became the first universal empire lasting under the names Babylon, Assyria and Chaldea to Belshazzar, the starting point of the four great kingdoms and the persecuting church-and-state system repeated by later apostate powers and the final world confederacy before its downfall.
Words and Immediate Context
The phrase mighty hunter means a hunter of men as well as of beasts. It denotes a warrior who gained power over others and founded a kingdom beginning with Babel. It denotes an overbearing tyrant and despot in God's sight, who pursued and destroyed people as he had pursued animals, exposing followers to the dangers of the chase, training them in weapons, and preparing them to help establish his dominion. He subdued men to reduce them under his dominion, compelled obedience and worship, and built dominion by violence and war, monopolizing power after the Flood in pride, ambition, greed and lust of conquest. He was the beginner of organized rebellion against God, a leader in rebellion and builder of the tower of Babel, whose golden kingdom reaching to Nebuchadnezzar makes him the starting point and antitype of later great apostate powers.
The phrase before the LORD means in Jehovah's sight, and does not mean God approved his conduct. It was spoken in open defiance of the lingering knowledge of God as the only King and rightful ruler, when he took to himself the title and prerogatives of king over men. The clause wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the LORD, records the widespread reputation expressed about him. That reputation gave rise to a familiar saying comparing others to him, which became a lasting proverb for such overbearing tyranny and a measure for later hunters. In its historical setting the verse thus introduces him among the founders associated with the early kingdoms of Babylonia and Assyria, as Noah's great-grandson and founder of the Chaldean monarchy whose beginning was Babel, Erech, Accad and Calneh in Shinar.
The verse belongs to the tenth chapter of Genesis, presented as reliable historical record rather than myth, giving the genealogy of the sons of Noah and the scattering of descendants throughout the earth. It is the account of the repeopling and peopling of the earth through Shem, Ham and Japheth, whose names, genealogies, beginnings of nations, foundations of large cities, and confusion of languages contain lessons and can be followed through the Bible and history to identify origins of nations. After the Flood men multiplied near where the ark rested and then pushed out in colonies where strong and intellectual men founded cities, tribes, kingdoms and empires. Nimrod was of the family of Ham and founded Babylon and Erech and Accad and Calneh, while others of Ham's descendants pushed into Canaan, Arabia, Africa and Egypt, with Mizraim founding Egypt.
The chapter traces the European or Aryan races to Japheth, the Semitic races to Shem, and the darker races associated with Africa, including the Negro, to Ham. Nimrod's account places one people of Babylonia among the descendants of Ham through Cush, who was not a Semite but founder of Babylonian civilization. This is consistent with two races having inhabited Babylonia from an early time, an older darker non-Semitic race with different language and appearance and a later Shemitic race. Babylon is thus shown as the Hamitic power that by religion and education and influence molded the world, Hamitic and Semitic, friend and foe, conqueror and conquered, for fifteen centuries or more in endeavor to rule the world, until it fell to the clearer-thinking, hardier, more frugal Medes and Persians, with the children of Shem dominant for many centuries between and the children of Japheth in Media and Persia then given the throne.
The genealogy necessarily involves a length of time covering several generations, after which Genesis 11 returns to trace other events. The confusion of tongues occurred but a little more than one hundred years after the Flood, so there is no disarrangement of chronological order in the statement about division into lands. The word rendered Gentiles simply means nations. One company of great men went westward and southward and founded Hebron, and seven years later another colony passed on to found Zoan in Egypt, so Hebron was older than Zoan.
The surrounding passage affirms that Babel and other cities existed before Nineveh and that Assyria was colonized from Babylonia, claims confirmed by archaeological monuments. Its early kingdom included Babylon and Erech, with Nippur lying between them, and Babylon's later highly advanced civilization as head of gold contrasts with the kingdoms that followed. The chapter's statement that unto Eber were born two sons, Peleg the ancestor of the Hebrews and Joktan the ancestor of the tribes of South Arabia, is matched by fact. When Abraham was born in Ur of the Chaldees a dynasty of Hebrew and South Arabian origin was ruling there with a population of the same character living under them, with Amraphel king of Shinar identical with Hammurabi the great king whose code of laws is like many of the laws of Moses and whose time had high civilization. Such intimate acquaintance with the time proves the account is accurate early history, not myth or late tradition compiled in Palestine when all recollection would have passed away.
Nimrod's Lineage and History
Nimrod was Noah's great-grandson through Ham and Cush, also reckoned as Ham's grandson, and Jewish and Arabic tradition remembers him as a mighty rebel who led the revolt against God that brought the confusion of tongues. His very name signifies rebellion, supercilious contempt, and extreme impiety, marking his boldness as rebellion in the sight of men and of the Lord. He founded the kingdom of Babel, afterward called Babylon, and the old Assyrian empire from which the Babylonian empire arose. That empire arose about 3000 years before Christ, reckoned as Belus about 2232 years before Christ, and governed Asia nearly 1300 years, about thirteen hundred years, before Babylon later arose from it and on its ruins the Chaldean or Babylonian monarchy was afterward founded.
The beginning of his kingdom was Babel and Erech and Accad and Calneh in the land of Shinar. Nippur lay between Babylon and Erech within that early setting of cities. From Babel he expanded across Shinar into Assyria, subduing Erech and Accad and Calneh, building a city at Calneh and making it for a time the seat of his government, and thus establishing a kingdom on the Euphrates and on the banks of the Euphrates. The tower of Babel was built by his successors about sixteen years after the founding of the city. His descendants are connected with the early history of India.
His name continued in local traditions though it had not been found on the monuments examined. He was the husband of Semiramis and the builder of Babylon, with the building of Babylon attributed to both, linking them together. Semiramis became an early worshiped goddess whose worship continued as the queen of heaven, Venus, and Diana of the Ephesians.
First Kingdom and Rule
He was the first man after the Flood to take to himself the title and prerogatives of king over men, the first to wear a kingly crown, and the first one-man power and despotism in civil as well as religious affairs. In doing so he claimed kingship and power that belong to God, recognized no superior, and established human sovereignty as the rulership of man over man and the subjection of man to man in place of self-government under God alone. His boldness was rebellion counted as such both by men and by the Lord, an especially bold act amid growing apostasy, violence and disorder.
His rule marked the passing of the world from society organized as enlarged families and tribes to nation and political community in the form of an organized State. He became a territorial sovereign ruling men as inhabitants of territory rather than as kindred, governing people because they lived within his land. That change meant not only kingship over a single city or territory but kingship over kings, sovereignty over separate peoples and territories, kingship expanded into empire. His exercise of power in this form became the first example of imperialism.
He thus personified and established the monarchical idea, becoming the model imitated by later would-be rulers in seeking royal authority and extending dominion over peoples, tribes and territories. Thothmes III of Egypt was a most notable far-ancient imitator, succeeding in establishing a truly universal dominion over all the peoples and nations of the East as far as the borders of India. His pattern of extreme royal self-exaltation and claims to divine status and prerogatives, reinforced by setting rulers apart from the people, was followed in Assyria and to the greatest lengths in Egypt. There the king was not content as in Assyria to call himself viceroy of his god but claimed to be the very embodiment of the god itself, the giver of life from whom the people receive the breath of their nostrils. The succession of expanding kingships so begun continued except where it was repudiated by republics in Rome and the United States.
That kingship resulted from growing apostasy as men got farther from God and would not retain God in their knowledge, passing first into idolatry and then from idolatry into monarchy. Before him there was only society, in which respect for the rights of persons and property was maintained, and such government as his became necessary just in proportion to the degree of apostasy. Even so bad a government as his is better than no government at all, yet without any apostasy there could never have been any State or human government at all, and without apostasy having gone to a fearful length there never could have been such a government as his. His kingdom at Babel, Erech, Accad and Calneh in Shinar therefore originated the State as the result of apostasy from God.
He was the first after the Flood to monopolize power on earth, carrying into human government Satan's spirit of pride, ambition, greed and lust of conquest and dominion. Beginning with the following he secured at Babel, he entered upon a career of conquest by war, subduing Erech and Accad and Calneh in the land of Shinar, building a city at Calneh and making it for a time the seat of his government. From that day onward human history is war from generation to generation, a history of violence whose path through the centuries is marked by bloodshed, grief, destruction and death. He stands at the beginning of an unbroken history of barbarism reaching to the present, which civilization, especially among nations that boast of their civilization, only thinly covers and which is quickly revealed when customary restraints can safely be disregarded.
He used reverence for divine government and divine authority to support his own despotic authority, and with the tower of Babel built in Shinar as a substitute for God's protection against another flood his followers made idolatry part of national power. Even before his time the rulers of Babylon already made religion minister to the stability of the state by taking the title not of king but of viceroy of Ridu their god. The practice of using divine authority and religious recognition to support civil government is therefore as old as the political history of the race. In this he is an example of one offered dominion and glory by Satan, establishing at Babel the capital of the first earthly government modeled on Lucifer's rule. The city and empire of Babylon so begun with him had principles born in the heart of Lucifer.
Rebellion at Babel
After the Flood men multiplied, would not retain God in their knowledge, forgot God and plunged into sin, and united under Nimrod to build Babel in defiance of God. The tower was planned to rise beyond the reach of another flood in vengeance for the destruction of their forefathers, to reach heaven, to make a name, and to make the city a supposed gateway to heaven that would secure salvation and control access to it. His ambition was to unite the people under one government and become a world ruler, and that rebellious movement among Noah's descendants gave rise to Babylon and to human ambition for power and independence from God.
He was the beginner of organized rebellion against God and of the world's first organized apostasy, a mighty hunter of men who built the city and tower of Babel. He was Noah's grandson through Ham, the founder of Babylon and the first king of the first human kingdom, established in rebellion against God, and a leader in the mysteries of iniquity. His determination to rule absolutely, acknowledging no authority above himself and claiming the loyalty and obedience due to God, made his kingdom an earthly expression of rebellion exalting the creature above the Creator and replacing God's way with humanity's own way of salvation.
That rebellion is named Babylon, which names this human rebellion and its confusion. God named it Babel to expose its system as confusion, including its self-salvation and image-worship and corruption of truth through ambition to control church and state. Its builders honored it as Bab-il, in Chaldean the gate of god or gateway to heaven, but after apostasy and the confusion of languages it came to signify confusion through the mingling of error with truth. Though the Lord tore the tower down, the kingdom took the part of the Babel-builders and held to their first rebellious work, and the same defiance continued when Nebuchadnezzar later presumed to build it again at the urging of Merodach.
After death he, or his successor, was deified and worshiped under the name Bel, Baal or Belus, reported to have become a demon god. That deification in old Babylon was the formal beginning of demonism and laid the foundation of the mysteries of Satan, the mystery of Bel or Babylon, and the beginning of Baalism, from which all demons were called Baalim. As chief among all who were deified, he became in idolatrous estimation a god and then a natural deity, the chief god of the sun, while other deified royalty ruled among the planets. His wife and political followers deified him and claimed he could still act through communication with spirits, and his worship was linked with the child worshiped as Osiris in Egypt and Tammuz in Phoenicia and Assyria. With him began idolatry in the form of hero worship, when the worshiped god was called the child of the sun and Sunday was set apart for his worship, while he as husband of Semiramis shared in the building of Babylon and she became a worshiped goddess as queen of heaven, Venus and Diana of the Ephesians.
His movement was one of deliberate defiance of God's word that exalted human wisdom in its place, and ignoring God's word in this way brought confusion and dispersion and final destruction. Because they set God at defiance, God placed His curse upon them by confounding their language, destroyed the tower built by Nimrod and his men, scattered the people, and broke up his plan to establish one universal head over the nations. Such centralized rule would hinder the advance of the gospel.
That universal apostasy left by the fourth century after the Flood only a handful of godly persons, requiring God to adopt the faithful family of Abraham to preserve true piety and worship in the earth. Nimrod as the first one-man power and despotism since the Flood, despotism in religion as well as other affairs, pursued men and compelled them to recognize his authority in all things and to worship as he dictated, usurping the place and power of God over minds, rights, persons and property and forcing them to things contrary to the righteousness of God. Abraham disregarded the spirit and power of that combine and kept individual integrity with God until God vindicated him and called him out to eternal reward.
His name signifies rebellion, and the first great cities built in the plain of Shinar, including Babylon and Nineveh, mark the start of city building associated with apostasy. This pattern of cities as strongholds of opposition to God continues through the age of widespread city building.
Babylon in Prophecy and Application
Babylon founded by Nimrod was the first kingdom to exercise universal empire, represented by the head of gold in Daniel's image in the time of Nebuchadnezzar its king. It continued nearly seventeen hundred years under different names, sometimes called Babylon, sometimes Assyria, and sometimes Chaldea, from Nimrod to Belshazzar who was its last king. It molded the world until its termination recorded in Daniel 5, and after fifteen centuries fell to the hardier Medes and Persians.
Nimrod as Noah's great-grandson stands at the beginning of the succession of earthly kingdoms from which the four great kingdoms are counted, with the Roman government identified as the fourth. The golden kingdom of Nebuchadnezzar reaches back to him for its starting point as builder of the tower of Babel and founder of Babylon, a mighty hunter of men and leader in rebellion against God, and he is the antitype of the great apostate powers that would afterward exist on earth.
The image of the great hunter is the scheme of Nimrod at Babel to establish one universal power, repeated in the Roman Church's idea of one universal church hunting down and destroying souls and annihilating God's truth. That papal power is described as the kingdom of Babylon ruling through rebellion and confusion after the pattern of Nimrod's violence. The power of Rome in that scheme is to be broken and replaced by the churches of the Reformation.
Babylon marks the beginning of the persecuting church-and-state system that has appeared in different forms throughout history through successive world powers and will continue until Christ's second coming.
The confederacy led by Nimrod against God at Babel established the world's first organized apostasy with ambition to unite people under one government and become a world ruler spanning the world. That long human dream for world dominion and religious dominion reaches back even before Nimrod to the Garden of Eden and was later seen in the Holy Roman Empire. Nimrod's attempt at a holy empire ruling the world failed as the Holy Roman Empire of the Middle Ages failed, and later attempts at the same dream will seem almost successful and then fail, until a true holy world empire comes under a Ruler whose law is love and whose subjects serve through love. A final world confederacy will repeat Babel on a larger scale before Babylon's downfall, for his plan to establish one universal head over the nations was broken up when God confused language, destroyed the tower and scattered the people, because such centralized rule would hinder the advance of the gospel.
The early history leading to the tower of Babel and to the city and empire of Babylon begun with Nimrod together with Semiramis provides the essential setting for understanding later prophecies about Babylon and prevents fanciful interpretations of prophecies about modern or spiritual Babylon. Because of its origin in principles born in the heart of Lucifer, its connection with the people and work of God, and its strong molding influence upon the world religiously, educationally and politically, Babylon demands large mention in divine prophecy by the principles of God's revelation.
Nimrod was the first king of Babylon and one of the earliest kings on earth, and the lesson of Daniel 4 that the Most High rules in the kingdom of men is one he needed to learn. Had it been learned by him and followed ever since, the story of earth's ages would have been far different.
Since Nimrod the mighty hunter established a kingdom on the banks of the Euphrates, wars and political disturbances have existed ever since that beginning. Ordinary wars and political commotions therefore carry no particular prophetic significance unless something connected with them marks them as unusual in frequency and wide extent.
Satan's effort in Genesis 10 to establish an organized government on earth opposed God's plan for the whole earth to be peopled, but God overruled it to make it the source of the nations that would people the earth, with the purpose that a holy and righteous people would eventually fill it. Nimrod the mighty hunter is the beginning of humanity's long habit of glorying in men, bowing to men and worshiping men, continuing through all past empires to modern royal pageants and political conventions, whose names, schemes, decrees and brief glory catch the eye and ear and lead the crowd to worship the god of flesh or the gods flesh has made, yet those men and their glory die with their generation in contrast to the enduring word of God. His reputation gave rise to the saying Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the LORD, and he is named among those who opposed the word of God and are remembered in infamy, and as the pattern for rebellious self-exalting name-makers whose enterprise is identified with Babylon.
Nimrod was a hunter of men as well as beasts, a violent tyrant who pursued and subdued people to build dominion, and his standing before the Lord means in open defiance of God as the only King, not with divine approval. His widespread fame became a lasting proverb for overbearing tyranny and the measure for later oppressors. He was the first to claim kingship over men after the Flood, turning kindred tribes into a territorial state and empire, and founding Babel with Erech, Accad and Calneh in Shinar from which Assyria was colonized. He led united mankind in organized rebellion at Babel to make a name, reach heaven and secure one universal rule, until God confounded language, destroyed the tower and scattered the people. The Babylon he began became the first universal empire lasting under the names Babylon, Assyria and Chaldea to Belshazzar, the starting point of the four great kingdoms and the persecuting church-and-state system repeated by later apostate powers and the final world confederacy before its downfall.
Words and Immediate Context
The phrase mighty hunter means a hunter of men as well as of beasts. It denotes a warrior who gained power over others and founded a kingdom beginning with Babel. It denotes an overbearing tyrant and despot in God's sight, who pursued and destroyed people as he had pursued animals, exposing followers to the dangers of the chase, training them in weapons, and preparing them to help establish his dominion. He subdued men to reduce them under his dominion, compelled obedience and worship, and built dominion by violence and war, monopolizing power after the Flood in pride, ambition, greed and lust of conquest. He was the beginner of organized rebellion against God, a leader in rebellion and builder of the tower of Babel, whose golden kingdom reaching to Nebuchadnezzar makes him the starting point and antitype of later great apostate powers.
The phrase before the LORD means in Jehovah's sight, and does not mean God approved his conduct. It was spoken in open defiance of the lingering knowledge of God as the only King and rightful ruler, when he took to himself the title and prerogatives of king over men. The clause wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the LORD, records the widespread reputation expressed about him. That reputation gave rise to a familiar saying comparing others to him, which became a lasting proverb for such overbearing tyranny and a measure for later hunters. In its historical setting the verse thus introduces him among the founders associated with the early kingdoms of Babylonia and Assyria, as Noah's great-grandson and founder of the Chaldean monarchy whose beginning was Babel, Erech, Accad and Calneh in Shinar.
The verse belongs to the tenth chapter of Genesis, presented as reliable historical record rather than myth, giving the genealogy of the sons of Noah and the scattering of descendants throughout the earth. It is the account of the repeopling and peopling of the earth through Shem, Ham and Japheth, whose names, genealogies, beginnings of nations, foundations of large cities, and confusion of languages contain lessons and can be followed through the Bible and history to identify origins of nations. After the Flood men multiplied near where the ark rested and then pushed out in colonies where strong and intellectual men founded cities, tribes, kingdoms and empires. Nimrod was of the family of Ham and founded Babylon and Erech and Accad and Calneh, while others of Ham's descendants pushed into Canaan, Arabia, Africa and Egypt, with Mizraim founding Egypt.
The chapter traces the European or Aryan races to Japheth, the Semitic races to Shem, and the darker races associated with Africa, including the Negro, to Ham. Nimrod's account places one people of Babylonia among the descendants of Ham through Cush, who was not a Semite but founder of Babylonian civilization. This is consistent with two races having inhabited Babylonia from an early time, an older darker non-Semitic race with different language and appearance and a later Shemitic race. Babylon is thus shown as the Hamitic power that by religion and education and influence molded the world, Hamitic and Semitic, friend and foe, conqueror and conquered, for fifteen centuries or more in endeavor to rule the world, until it fell to the clearer-thinking, hardier, more frugal Medes and Persians, with the children of Shem dominant for many centuries between and the children of Japheth in Media and Persia then given the throne.
The genealogy necessarily involves a length of time covering several generations, after which Genesis 11 returns to trace other events. The confusion of tongues occurred but a little more than one hundred years after the Flood, so there is no disarrangement of chronological order in the statement about division into lands. The word rendered Gentiles simply means nations. One company of great men went westward and southward and founded Hebron, and seven years later another colony passed on to found Zoan in Egypt, so Hebron was older than Zoan.
The surrounding passage affirms that Babel and other cities existed before Nineveh and that Assyria was colonized from Babylonia, claims confirmed by archaeological monuments. Its early kingdom included Babylon and Erech, with Nippur lying between them, and Babylon's later highly advanced civilization as head of gold contrasts with the kingdoms that followed. The chapter's statement that unto Eber were born two sons, Peleg the ancestor of the Hebrews and Joktan the ancestor of the tribes of South Arabia, is matched by fact. When Abraham was born in Ur of the Chaldees a dynasty of Hebrew and South Arabian origin was ruling there with a population of the same character living under them, with Amraphel king of Shinar identical with Hammurabi the great king whose code of laws is like many of the laws of Moses and whose time had high civilization. Such intimate acquaintance with the time proves the account is accurate early history, not myth or late tradition compiled in Palestine when all recollection would have passed away.
Nimrod's Lineage and History
Nimrod was Noah's great-grandson through Ham and Cush, also reckoned as Ham's grandson, and Jewish and Arabic tradition remembers him as a mighty rebel who led the revolt against God that brought the confusion of tongues. His very name signifies rebellion, supercilious contempt, and extreme impiety, marking his boldness as rebellion in the sight of men and of the Lord. He founded the kingdom of Babel, afterward called Babylon, and the old Assyrian empire from which the Babylonian empire arose. That empire arose about 3000 years before Christ, reckoned as Belus about 2232 years before Christ, and governed Asia nearly 1300 years, about thirteen hundred years, before Babylon later arose from it and on its ruins the Chaldean or Babylonian monarchy was afterward founded.
The beginning of his kingdom was Babel and Erech and Accad and Calneh in the land of Shinar. Nippur lay between Babylon and Erech within that early setting of cities. From Babel he expanded across Shinar into Assyria, subduing Erech and Accad and Calneh, building a city at Calneh and making it for a time the seat of his government, and thus establishing a kingdom on the Euphrates and on the banks of the Euphrates. The tower of Babel was built by his successors about sixteen years after the founding of the city. His descendants are connected with the early history of India.
His name continued in local traditions though it had not been found on the monuments examined. He was the husband of Semiramis and the builder of Babylon, with the building of Babylon attributed to both, linking them together. Semiramis became an early worshiped goddess whose worship continued as the queen of heaven, Venus, and Diana of the Ephesians.
First Kingdom and Rule
He was the first man after the Flood to take to himself the title and prerogatives of king over men, the first to wear a kingly crown, and the first one-man power and despotism in civil as well as religious affairs. In doing so he claimed kingship and power that belong to God, recognized no superior, and established human sovereignty as the rulership of man over man and the subjection of man to man in place of self-government under God alone. His boldness was rebellion counted as such both by men and by the Lord, an especially bold act amid growing apostasy, violence and disorder.
His rule marked the passing of the world from society organized as enlarged families and tribes to nation and political community in the form of an organized State. He became a territorial sovereign ruling men as inhabitants of territory rather than as kindred, governing people because they lived within his land. That change meant not only kingship over a single city or territory but kingship over kings, sovereignty over separate peoples and territories, kingship expanded into empire. His exercise of power in this form became the first example of imperialism.
He thus personified and established the monarchical idea, becoming the model imitated by later would-be rulers in seeking royal authority and extending dominion over peoples, tribes and territories. Thothmes III of Egypt was a most notable far-ancient imitator, succeeding in establishing a truly universal dominion over all the peoples and nations of the East as far as the borders of India. His pattern of extreme royal self-exaltation and claims to divine status and prerogatives, reinforced by setting rulers apart from the people, was followed in Assyria and to the greatest lengths in Egypt. There the king was not content as in Assyria to call himself viceroy of his god but claimed to be the very embodiment of the god itself, the giver of life from whom the people receive the breath of their nostrils. The succession of expanding kingships so begun continued except where it was repudiated by republics in Rome and the United States.
That kingship resulted from growing apostasy as men got farther from God and would not retain God in their knowledge, passing first into idolatry and then from idolatry into monarchy. Before him there was only society, in which respect for the rights of persons and property was maintained, and such government as his became necessary just in proportion to the degree of apostasy. Even so bad a government as his is better than no government at all, yet without any apostasy there could never have been any State or human government at all, and without apostasy having gone to a fearful length there never could have been such a government as his. His kingdom at Babel, Erech, Accad and Calneh in Shinar therefore originated the State as the result of apostasy from God.
He was the first after the Flood to monopolize power on earth, carrying into human government Satan's spirit of pride, ambition, greed and lust of conquest and dominion. Beginning with the following he secured at Babel, he entered upon a career of conquest by war, subduing Erech and Accad and Calneh in the land of Shinar, building a city at Calneh and making it for a time the seat of his government. From that day onward human history is war from generation to generation, a history of violence whose path through the centuries is marked by bloodshed, grief, destruction and death. He stands at the beginning of an unbroken history of barbarism reaching to the present, which civilization, especially among nations that boast of their civilization, only thinly covers and which is quickly revealed when customary restraints can safely be disregarded.
He used reverence for divine government and divine authority to support his own despotic authority, and with the tower of Babel built in Shinar as a substitute for God's protection against another flood his followers made idolatry part of national power. Even before his time the rulers of Babylon already made religion minister to the stability of the state by taking the title not of king but of viceroy of Ridu their god. The practice of using divine authority and religious recognition to support civil government is therefore as old as the political history of the race. In this he is an example of one offered dominion and glory by Satan, establishing at Babel the capital of the first earthly government modeled on Lucifer's rule. The city and empire of Babylon so begun with him had principles born in the heart of Lucifer.
Rebellion at Babel
After the Flood men multiplied, would not retain God in their knowledge, forgot God and plunged into sin, and united under Nimrod to build Babel in defiance of God. The tower was planned to rise beyond the reach of another flood in vengeance for the destruction of their forefathers, to reach heaven, to make a name, and to make the city a supposed gateway to heaven that would secure salvation and control access to it. His ambition was to unite the people under one government and become a world ruler, and that rebellious movement among Noah's descendants gave rise to Babylon and to human ambition for power and independence from God.
He was the beginner of organized rebellion against God and of the world's first organized apostasy, a mighty hunter of men who built the city and tower of Babel. He was Noah's grandson through Ham, the founder of Babylon and the first king of the first human kingdom, established in rebellion against God, and a leader in the mysteries of iniquity. His determination to rule absolutely, acknowledging no authority above himself and claiming the loyalty and obedience due to God, made his kingdom an earthly expression of rebellion exalting the creature above the Creator and replacing God's way with humanity's own way of salvation.
That rebellion is named Babylon, which names this human rebellion and its confusion. God named it Babel to expose its system as confusion, including its self-salvation and image-worship and corruption of truth through ambition to control church and state. Its builders honored it as Bab-il, in Chaldean the gate of god or gateway to heaven, but after apostasy and the confusion of languages it came to signify confusion through the mingling of error with truth. Though the Lord tore the tower down, the kingdom took the part of the Babel-builders and held to their first rebellious work, and the same defiance continued when Nebuchadnezzar later presumed to build it again at the urging of Merodach.
After death he, or his successor, was deified and worshiped under the name Bel, Baal or Belus, reported to have become a demon god. That deification in old Babylon was the formal beginning of demonism and laid the foundation of the mysteries of Satan, the mystery of Bel or Babylon, and the beginning of Baalism, from which all demons were called Baalim. As chief among all who were deified, he became in idolatrous estimation a god and then a natural deity, the chief god of the sun, while other deified royalty ruled among the planets. His wife and political followers deified him and claimed he could still act through communication with spirits, and his worship was linked with the child worshiped as Osiris in Egypt and Tammuz in Phoenicia and Assyria. With him began idolatry in the form of hero worship, when the worshiped god was called the child of the sun and Sunday was set apart for his worship, while he as husband of Semiramis shared in the building of Babylon and she became a worshiped goddess as queen of heaven, Venus and Diana of the Ephesians.
His movement was one of deliberate defiance of God's word that exalted human wisdom in its place, and ignoring God's word in this way brought confusion and dispersion and final destruction. Because they set God at defiance, God placed His curse upon them by confounding their language, destroyed the tower built by Nimrod and his men, scattered the people, and broke up his plan to establish one universal head over the nations. Such centralized rule would hinder the advance of the gospel.
That universal apostasy left by the fourth century after the Flood only a handful of godly persons, requiring God to adopt the faithful family of Abraham to preserve true piety and worship in the earth. Nimrod as the first one-man power and despotism since the Flood, despotism in religion as well as other affairs, pursued men and compelled them to recognize his authority in all things and to worship as he dictated, usurping the place and power of God over minds, rights, persons and property and forcing them to things contrary to the righteousness of God. Abraham disregarded the spirit and power of that combine and kept individual integrity with God until God vindicated him and called him out to eternal reward.
His name signifies rebellion, and the first great cities built in the plain of Shinar, including Babylon and Nineveh, mark the start of city building associated with apostasy. This pattern of cities as strongholds of opposition to God continues through the age of widespread city building.
Babylon in Prophecy and Application
Babylon founded by Nimrod was the first kingdom to exercise universal empire, represented by the head of gold in Daniel's image in the time of Nebuchadnezzar its king. It continued nearly seventeen hundred years under different names, sometimes called Babylon, sometimes Assyria, and sometimes Chaldea, from Nimrod to Belshazzar who was its last king. It molded the world until its termination recorded in Daniel 5, and after fifteen centuries fell to the hardier Medes and Persians.
Nimrod as Noah's great-grandson stands at the beginning of the succession of earthly kingdoms from which the four great kingdoms are counted, with the Roman government identified as the fourth. The golden kingdom of Nebuchadnezzar reaches back to him for its starting point as builder of the tower of Babel and founder of Babylon, a mighty hunter of men and leader in rebellion against God, and he is the antitype of the great apostate powers that would afterward exist on earth.
The image of the great hunter is the scheme of Nimrod at Babel to establish one universal power, repeated in the Roman Church's idea of one universal church hunting down and destroying souls and annihilating God's truth. That papal power is described as the kingdom of Babylon ruling through rebellion and confusion after the pattern of Nimrod's violence. The power of Rome in that scheme is to be broken and replaced by the churches of the Reformation.
Babylon marks the beginning of the persecuting church-and-state system that has appeared in different forms throughout history through successive world powers and will continue until Christ's second coming.
The confederacy led by Nimrod against God at Babel established the world's first organized apostasy with ambition to unite people under one government and become a world ruler spanning the world. That long human dream for world dominion and religious dominion reaches back even before Nimrod to the Garden of Eden and was later seen in the Holy Roman Empire. Nimrod's attempt at a holy empire ruling the world failed as the Holy Roman Empire of the Middle Ages failed, and later attempts at the same dream will seem almost successful and then fail, until a true holy world empire comes under a Ruler whose law is love and whose subjects serve through love. A final world confederacy will repeat Babel on a larger scale before Babylon's downfall, for his plan to establish one universal head over the nations was broken up when God confused language, destroyed the tower and scattered the people, because such centralized rule would hinder the advance of the gospel.
The early history leading to the tower of Babel and to the city and empire of Babylon begun with Nimrod together with Semiramis provides the essential setting for understanding later prophecies about Babylon and prevents fanciful interpretations of prophecies about modern or spiritual Babylon. Because of its origin in principles born in the heart of Lucifer, its connection with the people and work of God, and its strong molding influence upon the world religiously, educationally and politically, Babylon demands large mention in divine prophecy by the principles of God's revelation.
Nimrod was the first king of Babylon and one of the earliest kings on earth, and the lesson of Daniel 4 that the Most High rules in the kingdom of men is one he needed to learn. Had it been learned by him and followed ever since, the story of earth's ages would have been far different.
Since Nimrod the mighty hunter established a kingdom on the banks of the Euphrates, wars and political disturbances have existed ever since that beginning. Ordinary wars and political commotions therefore carry no particular prophetic significance unless something connected with them marks them as unusual in frequency and wide extent.
Satan's effort in Genesis 10 to establish an organized government on earth opposed God's plan for the whole earth to be peopled, but God overruled it to make it the source of the nations that would people the earth, with the purpose that a holy and righteous people would eventually fill it. Nimrod the mighty hunter is the beginning of humanity's long habit of glorying in men, bowing to men and worshiping men, continuing through all past empires to modern royal pageants and political conventions, whose names, schemes, decrees and brief glory catch the eye and ear and lead the crowd to worship the god of flesh or the gods flesh has made, yet those men and their glory die with their generation in contrast to the enduring word of God. His reputation gave rise to the saying Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the LORD, and he is named among those who opposed the word of God and are remembered in infamy, and as the pattern for rebellious self-exalting name-makers whose enterprise is identified with Babylon.