Genesis 10:8–12
Cush fathered Nimrod; he was the first on earth to be a mighty man. He was a mighty hunter before the LORD. Therefore it is said, “Like Nimrod a mighty hunter before the LORD.” The beginning of his kingdom was Babel, Erech, Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. From that land he went into Assyria and built Nineveh, Rehoboth-Ir, Calah, and Resen between Nineveh and Calah; that is the great city.
The popular interpretation of this seemingly random narrative and character Nimrod, strangely inserted in a genealogy of Noah, is that Nimrod is a symbol of evil and rebellion against God. This interpretation draws from the evil associated with the cities he founded, particularly Babel, which came to be symbols of rebellion against God, and which were in later years opposed to the people of God. Babel is where the first great rebellion was supposedly instituted by man. Babylon (future Babel) and Syria were instruments God used to punish his people Israel. And in Revelation, Babylon becomes the symbol of false religion that is opposed to the spiritual kingdom of God.
But there is a confusing description of Nimrod that seems to counter this interpretation. Nimrod was a mighty hunter ‘before the Lord’. And this description is issued twice.
Now whereas there seems to be some confusion about whether Nimrod was a good or evil man, with many preferring to regard him as evil, there is one man who lived before Nirmod, whose evil is not in doubt. Of him, it is written,
Genesis 4:10–16
And the LORD said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground. And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. When you work the ground, it shall no longer yield to you its strength. You shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth.” Cain said to the LORD, “My punishment is greater than I can bear. Behold, you have driven me today away from the ground, and from your face I shall be hidden. I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.” Then the LORD said to him, “Not so! If anyone kills Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold.” And the LORD put a mark on Cain, lest any who found him should attack him. Then Cain went away from the presence of the LORD and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden.
Cain was the first man to be cursed by God. One of the consequences of the curse, which Cain himself confesses, is that he shall be ‘hidden from the face of the Lord’. And true to that expectation, the Scripture says that Cain went away from the presence of the Lord.
The other consequence of his banishment was that he would be ‘cursed from the ground’, so that it would not yield its increase to him.
Considering the Bible’s commentary on Nimrod, is it not the exact opposite? Unlike Cain who went and lived away from the presence of the Lord, on account of the curse of God upon him, Nimrod lived and did his exploits ‘before the Lord’, and was evidently successful in them. That does not sound to me like the Scriptures intend for us to read him as an evil man – not primarily because things went well for him, but that he lived ‘before the Lord’, and things went well for him. Evil people do not live before the Lord. Now, some people say that Nimrod being ‘before the Lord’ means that he exalted himself before the Lord, which references the subsequent commandment ‘you shall have no other gods before me’. But it is not possible for anything or anyone to be before the Lord in that sense. We may esteem some things before the Lord, but it is not possible for anything to be before him. Here, the statement of Nimrod being ‘before the Lord’ is a statement of fact, not of what Nimrod thought of himself.
Why then is Nimrod esteemed thus by the Scriptures? Whereas much of the interpretation of the character of Nimrod has centered around the examination of the cities he founded, we will argue here that this is simply anecdotal evidence. There is however, a more compelling set of considerations that can help us understand why Nimrod is recognized for having lived ‘before the Lord’.
There are a couple of facts about Nimrod that begin to give us a clue:
- He was a hunter
- He built cities and spread across the face of the earth
What does Nimrod being a hunter have to do with anything? And what does his subduing of the earth have to do with anything? It turns out, it has everything to do with God’s commandents. We have to believe that the Holy Spirit, being the author of logic, does not throw random details into the Scriptures just to mix things up and keep the stories interesting. There is a flow in the narrative, and what is said now has every connection with what the Holy Spirit has just said previously. If we do not recognize this, we will miss out on what He intends to communicate. What we are saying is, the Scripture has to interpret the Scripture. Context is critical. Again, a lot of beliefs about Nimrod are sourced from extrabibical sourses, when the answers are right here in the pages of the Scripture.
If we back up to Genesis 9, which is after Noah has offered the sacrifices to God after the flood, and God having smelled the pleasing aroma blesses Noah and mankind, this is what God says to Noah:
Genesis 9:1–5
And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens, upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea. Into your hand they are delivered. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. And for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning: from every beast I will require it and from man. From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man.
Notice that the blessing of God to Noah is also in the form of a commandment. God gives Noah 3 commandments
- To be fruitful and multiply
- To fill the earth (and therefore spread abroad in it)
- To eat animals in addition to vegetation
Note that God says he will put the dread of man in the animals. Why? Because he has ‘given them into the hands of man’. What does that mean? Just as he gave man plants for food, now he gives man all the animals for food. So why will the animals be afraid of man? Because man is going to be the ultimate predator of all the animals. And that, in fact, he is. Now animals may not fear every instance of man, but animals have come to dread humanity in general, precisely because of the fact that man is the most formidable hunter. Even the lions of the Maasai mara, that apparently fear nothing, live in dread of maasai warriors walking around with spears and clubs!
When God created man and animals in the sinless state, everything and everyone was vegetarian. But there is a change after the fall. God introduces the carnivorous diet. Man (and presumably animals) is now allowed to eat animals. But this is not just an allowance. It is a commandment. Just as God commands man to be fruitful and multiply, and to fill the earth (and therefore spread abroad in it), he also commands man to hunt down, kill and use the animals for his survival. In fact, God’s requirement of man to eat meat is seen in the Passover law. Everyone had to eat lamb. You couldn’t be a Jewish vegetarian!
And these three mandates – to multiply, spread on the earth, and hunt animals, are not disconnected. There may be a number of reasons why they are all integrated.
1. In the first place, the hunting of animals directly aids the advance of human civilization, in two ways:
- After the flood, there were only eight individuals on the planet. The odds against the human race, which is more delicate than any animal species that can more easily survive in the wild were great. If Noah and his children and grandchildren only depended on agriculture – which would involve clearing wild landscapes, planting seed, then waiting months for it to grow, they would not have multiplied fast enough. Whereas man cannot eat grass and trees, man can be nourished by animals that can convert grass and trees to a form that he can consume – their bodies. In this way, man does not have to wait to clear forests and grasslands to plant food crops and wait for them to grow to eat.
- With the animosity introduced between man an animals (and also between animals and animals), the animals are not the only target of hunting from each other and from man. Man is also a target of hunting by animals. It is therefore critical that the animal population be controlled if human civilisation is to flourish. A good example of this principle from the Bible is seen in God’s plan not to drive the Canaanites from the land before Israel in one fell swoop. Why?
Deuteronomy 7:22
The LORD your God will clear away these nations before you little by little. You may not make an end of them at once, lest the wild beasts grow too numerous for you.
Whereas the Israelites were numerous, they were not numerous enough to keep the wild animals at bay. They would have been overpowered by the beasts if all the Canaanites were cleared from the land immediately. It was therefore necessary that their population grow first before displacing the Canaanites without the risk of harm from wild animals.
Conversely, when God was displeased with man, one of the ways he judged them was to send wild beasts to destroy them, as was the case when foreign nations occupied Israel after the exile of the Northern kingdom.
2 Kings 17:24–25
And the king of Assyria brought people from Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath, and Sepharvaim, and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the people of Israel. And they took possession of Samaria and lived in its cities. And at the beginning of their dwelling there, they did not fear the LORD. Therefore the LORD sent lions among them, which killed some of them.
After the flood, the harmony between man and animals turned into competition. Either man dominates, and animals die, or animals dominate, and man dies.
2. This conflict between man and animals may also be symbolic of the conflict between the flesh and the Spirit (since animals are mere flesh, not possessing the spirit of God). Animals would rise in rebellion against man, just as the flesh of man has risen in rebellion against God.
Galatians 5:16–17
But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.
It is instructive to note that sin entered the world by the agency of an animal. An animal gained mastery over man, which is probably a picture of the flesh gaining mastery over the mind of man, which is the manifestation of the spirit in his body. In the same way, the woman, who is the flesh of man, gained mastery over man. There might be a point here.
Now the serpent is decribed as the ‘craftiest’ of the animals the Lord God had made. Craftiness here means intelligence with malevolence. Where did this serpent get this malevolence? The new testament tells us that it is in fact Satan who deceived Eve. Satan had possessed the serpent.
If then the serpent was ‘the craftiest’, it means there were other animals that had also acquired craftiness. And if the serpent was crafty by reason of hosting a malevolent, intelligent spirit, the other animals were probably crafty by the same reason. That is, it appears that there was a demonic infestation of animals in Eden1, which is probably the point at which Satan and the third of the angels fell.
It would appear to me at least, that the reason God drowned all animals – not just man, and yet man was the sinner, is that at the time of the flood there was widespread demon possession, not only of man, but also of animals. Remember the man with the legion delivered by our Lord? The demons begged to infest the pigs. That demons infest animals is not in question. Recall also that the Lord drowned the pigs just as he has drowned all the animals at the time of the flood.
And there is also one curious detail that we may miss in Genesis in the description of the animals. Years before the Mosaic food laws were established, there is already, at the time of Noah, a distinction between clean and unclean animals. And God accepts sacrifices only of the clean animals. Notice also, that the serpent was the craftiest of the ‘beats of the field’, not of the livestock. And it is, generally, the beasts of the field that make up unclean animals2.
There is one final detail however, that makes the speculation seem tenable. God curses the serpent, and speaks these words:
Genesis 3:14
The LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life.
Now snakes don’t eat soil. So what does it mean that the serpent will eat dust? The clue is in the very next verses. God says to Adam,
Genesis 3:19
By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.
Adam is ‘dust’, that is returning to ‘dust’. The first ‘dust’ does not mean that Adam is a lump of soil about to crumble and spread on the ground. It means he is flesh, constituted of dust. The dust is a reference to his flesh. When Adam was created, he was ‘formed dust’, i.e., flesh, into which the spirit of God was breathed. In sinning, Adam lost communion with God through his spirit, and therefore became mere flesh. The reason he would die physically is that he had lost the life of God.
So, when the Lord says to the serpent ‘you shall eat dust’, he means, the serpent will be carnivorous from then on. The serpent would eat flesh as a sign of the curse of God. That’s why you have never seen a herbivorous snake. And, generally, in the mosaic food laws, all carnivores and omnivores are unclean. And that includes birds and insects. Interestingly, that might also show that man is regarded as unclean before God.
Carnivorous behaviour is therefore a consequence of the fall. God, however, turns it into the means through which he would redeem man, for years later, man would live by ‘eating the flesh and drinking the blood of the son of man’, as the perfect sacrifice for sin.
Ok, back to our point: man was made ruler of the beasts. But through the fall and because of it, beasts rebelled against man, and they would either dominate man, or man would dominate them. Either man hunts the beasts, or the beasts will hunt man.
So, God gives to Noah three clear instructions, which are also statement of blessing. What does Noah do about it?
Genesis 9:20–21
Noah began to be a man of the soil, and he planted a vineyard. He drank of the wine and became drunk and lay uncovered in his tent.
God had told Noah, specifically (and by extension to his descendants) to be fruitful and multiply. There is no evidence Noah had other children. Maybe he was past child-bearing age, we don’t know. All we know is that God had told him to increase, but he didn’t. Secondly, God had told him to eat (and therefore hunt) every living thing. Noah was instead content to be a man of the soil. It’s not wrong, but that was not the full brief. Thirdly, God had given Noah the task of conquering and subduing the earth and spreading upon it. Noah however, does not seem to have taken this task seriously, perhaps indicated by the fact that he had enough time to drink wine for leisure.s Perhaps I am being too harsh on Noah, but it does not seem that Noah followed through with the second set of instructions with as much diligence as he had done the first time when he had to build the ark. And maybe it is understandable. Setting foot on a world that is probably geologically uncrecognisable, with rotting flesh or bones scattered around, some of them your own relatives, and the landscape probably as think and daunting as a rainforest would have made anyone deflated and depressed.
Enter Nimrod. What Noah, and all his other children failed to do, Nimrod does, with zeal and skill. God commanded Noah to hunt down the animals. That is exactly what Nimrod does. God commanded Noah to multiply and fill the earth. That is exactly what Nimrod does. He establishes a city in one place, then moves on and establishes another, then moves on and establishes another – replacing wild landscapes with human civilisation – Nimrod is subduing the earth, exactly as God commanded Adam and Noah to do. This is why, unlike many interpreters who paint Nimrod as a rebellious godless, wicked character, I choose to believe that Nimrod was ‘a mighty hunter before the Lord’. Nimrod’s hunting exploits and establishment of cities is not, after all, just filler material for an interesting story. It is the account of a man who took God seriously.
What then of the bad reputation of these cities he establishes? Prophecies abound in the Bible against Babylon, against Nineveh, against Syria. Well, prophecies abound also against Jerusalem. In fact, in Revelation, the Holy Spirit calls Jerusalem Soddom and Egypt!
Revelation 11:8
and their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city that symbolically is called Sodom and Egypt, where their Lord was crucified.
That does not mean David was a wicked, godless man to have built it and made it the endeared capital of Israel. Whereas David established Jerusalem as the great city of the King, and Solomon built the temple of God in it, it fell into spiritual disrepair and became an apostate city, so much so that it was repeatedly destroyed by foreign armies by the command of God.
That Babel became the site of a global rebellion, and Nineveh and Syria afflicted Israel as godless nations, is no more an indictment to its founder than the apostacy of Israel is an indictment against God, its founder.
Conclusion
The account of Nimrod, rather than teach us how we ought not to be ambitious to build cities that will later rebel against God, aught to teach us a number of precious lessons:
Nimrod was a man of faith. God commanded, and he obeyed. As a result, he became successful and mighty before the Lord. Some Christians are so inclined to the suffering side of faith that they find it strange that God can grant greatness and success on earth on account of our obedience. We often expect only suffering, that we easily write off those who seem to be doing well as sub-spiritual or unspiritual. But Hebrews tells us that it is often a mix:
Some missionaries give up everything and die without seeing a single convert in some savage village they relocated to. Others experience revival after revival wherever they go. Christianity brings terrible persecution to Christians in one generation, and ushers in the heights of science and industry in another. And just because the west is now antichrist and morally decadent, and at the forefront of opposing God, does not mean the benefits wrought by the faith of the founders of its civilisations is suspect.Hebrews 11:32–38
And what more shall I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets—who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Women received back their dead by resurrection. Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated—of whom the world was not worthy—wandering about in deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.
Many godly men have founded churches and movements that were powerful instruments of revival in God’s hands, but which are today empty shells or even shells containing spiritual rotten eggs. That does not mean the founders of the movement were evil. Otherwise the apostle Paul, who pastored the Ephesian church, would be judged an evil man for founding a church which would later on be threatened with extinction for its spiritual irrelevance.
God, even today, commands us to subdue the earth, especially spiritually – to wage war against the flesh and against worldly and godless philosophies. Will we act, or will we plant a vineyard and enjoy the wine?
Not only so, but the commandment to physically subdue the earth is not abrogated. Christians in all ages have started the best schools, hospitals, made life-changing discoveries and inventions, advocated for righteous laws, cared for the poor and needy, and contributed significantly to the good of mankind. The same mandate is with us today.- Another very encouraging lesson to me is that Nimrod is the son of Cush, the son of Ham. Ham is the son of Noah who acted dishonourably by exposing his father’s nakedness instead of covering it, and for it got a curse upon his son Canaan, whose descendants endured genocide at the hands of Israel. His other sons are Cush (probably the father of black Africans), Egypt (the oppressor of Israel, the people of God). Not the brightest heritage. And yet, it is the grandson of this man, who acted dishonourably, who, of all the descendants of Noah, had the greatest faith in God, proven by his obedience, that outshone even that of Noah after the flood.
God is merciful. Just because Ham messed up, does not mean his children were all doomed. The same man who had a cursed son is the one who was also granted a most blessed grandson.
Now, there are still some questions to solve. In the next chapter (Genesis 11), we read that Babel became Babel because that is where God confused the languages of the people. And Babel, the Scriptures note, was the ‘the beginning of his kingdom’. So was Nimrod the one who assembled the people and told them to build a tower to heaven as a monument to their unity and defiance of the commandment to spread? And was Nimrod’s expansion forced by the confusion at Babel, rather than by his own willing obedience? Perhaps. But there are some things to consider:
- The Bible says that certain cities were the beginning of Nimrod’s kingdom, including Babel, all of which were in the plain of Shinar. This is where the people settled and attempted to form the first version of the United Nations. It is therefore very possible, that Nimrod was their ruler, and that he at least participated in the tower of Babel project.
- However, even if that is the case, it is instructive to note that the Bible rarely depicts heroes of faith without flaws – and sometimes, serious flaws. We do not write off Noah because of his naked drunkenness, Abraham because of Hagar, Jacob because of his favouritism, or David because of Bathsheba. No, we do not write off Gideon because he set up an idol that ensnared Israel. Why then should we write off Nimrod because he initially disobeyed the commandment to spread (if in fact, he did?). Despite this possible failure, Nimrod is still esteemed to have lived before the Lord, and I think God’s overall verdict is what ought to carry the day. And that failure, if true, should be an encouragement to us, that God still thinks well of his saints in spite of their failures.
- Notice however, that Nimrod did not establish Babel only. He founded other cities within the plain of Shinar, and spread to other regions and founded cities there as well. Abraham was commanded to go to Canaan, but because of the famine he decided t go to Egypt without consulting God. That is probably where he found Hagar who would later prove to be a temptation to him to disbelieve God’s promise. But the Bible tells us that Abraham grew stronger in faith. Just because Nimrod wavered (if in fact, he did) did not prevent him from continuing in obedience after Babel. Whereas mankind initially wanted one city, after Babel, Nimrod travels from place to place establishing multiple cities. He does not try to build another United Nations.
In conclusion then, I think Nimrod is misinterpreted precisely because those who try to interpret him pay no attention to the context and fall into the trap of believing the account of Nimrod is self-sufficient, to be interpreted in isolation without regard to the preceding texts. We are arguing, however, that the account of Nimrod is not inserted into the text whimsically. There is a flow of logic from the previous texts, and identifying that flow reveals that far from Nimrod being the first antichrist, he is in fact ‘a mighty hunter before the Lord’.
But the text had already told us that, rather plainly.