Foundations, once laid, rarely change, especially for the better. Of course we have biblical proof in the book of Revelation, and of course many other places, that Babylon never did change. If anything, it has gotten worse. God felt so strongly about the evil potential of what was being done here that He directly intervened to slow down its development.
There are indications given to us in name. The beginning of Nimrod's kingdom was Babel. God is not indiscriminate with names. They are purposely used. Take note that God says Nimrod was "a mighty man."
There is a direct connection between "giants" at the beginning of this verse, and "mighty" at its end, and the fact that in Genesis 10 Nimrod is identified as "a mighty man."
First of all, "giants" has nothing whatever to do with being of a tall and muscular build. It has everything to do with being very influential and renown in terms of cultural leadership, especially in the sense that we are given in Genesis 6:11.
These mighty men were providing evil, deceitful, violent and enslaving cultural leadership. Notice again in verse 4 it says that there were giants not only before the flood, but it also says "after" that—the implication being that there were giants afterthe flood as well as beforethe flood. And so there were mighty men after the flood as well, because the giants were mighty men, and Nimrod was a mighty man. Nimrod was a giant in terms of the context of Genesis 6:4. Nimrod then was one of those mighty influential men afterward.
We are going to go back now to Genesis 10. The name "Nimrod" comes from the Hebrew verbal root that is transliterated "marad." It means, "to rebel." So Nimrod was given a significant name. He was a rebel. The name Nimrod itself means "Let us revolt."
When the Bible says "men of renown," it is literally saying "men of name." That is, men of reputation. When it says, "Nimrod was a mighty one before the Lord," it is using that phraseology in the same sense as "men of renown." Nimrod was a man of great reputation. As we might say today, he was an influential celebrity that people would follow.
The second item to notice is that Nimrod was a mighty man before the Lord. This is important. This is so important that it is mentioned twice in the same verse. That emphasis means, "Pay attention to this, because it is going to tell you something about the kind of celebrity that Nimrod was."
Now one can stand "before" or "in front of" another as a friend or as an enemy. I want you to notice that there is not one mention of animals in this whole context regarding Nimrod nor the founding of Babel. Nimrod was a mighty hunter in terms of men. He was a Nephilim—a giant of moral and spiritual nature. He hunted down other Nephilim, and he eliminated them. He got rid of the competition and established a despotic and autocratic violent enslaving system of government.
Some translations, knowing some of this background, render that word "before" as "against." "Nimrod, the mighty hunter, against the Lord" is not a technically correct translation, but it is correct in terms of revealing God's intent to show Nimrod's relationship with Him. The founder of Babylon was clearly an enemy, even as God calls "this world" and its friends as His enemy in James 4.
It also says that the beginning of Nimrod's kingdom was Babel. That name in itself is an indicator of what the founder thought they were doing, because Babel, in the Accadian language means "Gate of God." In other words, what they were building was to be the Gate of God. They had very high-blown opinions about their ambition.
They were saying that this city (Babylon) and the government and the system they were putting together was the way of a higher and greater way of life—that it was the gate, the door. Jesus said, "Enter you into the straight gate." It is that kind of meaning. Nimrod and his cohorts were saying, "If you … . . .
I think that it's important to lay a foundation here, because empires or systems have beginnings, and what is laid in the foundation rarely changes through the years, especially for the better. Doing this helps us to understand God's perspective when we approach the end. God is a God of patterns, and He does things in patterns so that we will be able to follow them.
In verse 8, referring to Nimrod, it says, "he began to be a mighty one," and in verse 9 it says "he was a mighty hunter." The term "mighty" here is directly related to what God says in Genesis 6:4. The time setting in Genesis 6:4 is just before the flood.
We'll see the similarity of the words—the statement about Nimrod and the statement here about those giants who were in the earth before the flood. There is a direct tie here between these two.
We're going to look first at the word "giants." This is the word Nephilim, and this has nothing to do with being tall and muscular. It has everything to do with cultural leadership. You can see what God is describing here. He's describing the way the cultures were just before the flood. Nephilim has to be seen in that context there. The word is used in terms of that. These Nephilim were establishing evil, deceitful, violent and enslaving leadership. We're going to connect this with "men of renown," because that is right in the same verse: "The same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown."
That word "renown" literally means "name." They were men of name. In other words, they had a reputation. They were people of reputation. That term is used in a derogatory sense. These were not good characters. When it talks about Nimrod in chapter 10, in verses 8 and 9, it is used in the same sense. It is a derogatory sense in which it is seen.
Now going back to Genesis 10 again, verse 9 says Nimrod was "a mighty hunter before the LORD." Nimrod means "let us revolt." In the context of Genesis 10 there is absolutely no mention of animals. Again, the context has to do with the description of character, moral spirituality, and culture. Nimrod was a mighty man, a mighty hunter in terms of men. He was like the Nephilim. He was a giant of a moral and spiritual nature.
Do you know what Nimrod was doing when he was hunting? Nimrod hunted other Nephilim, and eliminated them. He got rid of the competition and established a despotic and autocratic system of government. He did that before the Lord. In other words, he did what he did right in front of God. God was aware of what he was doing. The revolt wasn't hidden.
Let's look at the term "against." It's not in there, is it? No, it's not, but the sense is there. It is the sense of the word "before." There are some Bibles that actually translate that word "against." However, the word "before" is a proper literal translation of that Hebrew word.
Now if a person is standing before another, he can stand before the person as a friend, he can be neutral, or he can be an enemy. We're already getting all kinds of clues about Nimrod and how he stood before the Lord, because he is named "he who revolts." He is standing before the Lord as an enemy. He is against God, and the evidence for that is presented in chapter 11, which we will go to in just a moment.
Nimrod founded a city, and he named it Babilu. Not Babel. He called it Babilu, and Babilu means "Gate of God." Babel is what the Hebrews called it, and thus when Moses, who was a Hebrew, when he wrote, he called it "Babel." Babel is the Hebrew name. It sounds somewhat similar to Babilu, but Babel means, "confusion."
God is the Judge of all. He saw what was going on. All this was done in front of Him although He was up at His location in Heaven. But as the Judge of all things, He came down to give it His eyeball right on the spot.
There is the evidence of what Nimrod (which means "Let us revolt") built, in what he called "Babilu," which was called by the Hebrews "Babel." It was a place of revolution. … . . .
Has mankind, under Satan's sway, ever before attempted to bring the whole world under one government?
I want to draw our attention to this word before. "He was a might hunter before the Lord." The word literally means "face"—that which is in the front and which appears to another facing you, like face-to-face. Nimrod was a mighty hunter facing the Lord. The word before literally means, "that which turns." It has a wide variety of usages. It can be translated facing, before, in front of, or against.
Against is the correct translation here. You can tell that by the context. He was a mighty hunter against the Lord. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord in the sense of fighting against. You don't turn your back on your enemy. You face him and he faces you.
Nimrod was against; he was facing the LORD in battle, in antagonism, rather than in submission. That's shown in the context by his conquests. The beginning of his kingdom was Babel. There's more here than meets the eye. He conquered Babel. He conquered Erech, and Accad, and Calneh in the land of Shinar. He was bringing these (probably city-states) under his control and forming them into one nation. Nowhere did God give the right to dominion over other men in this regard by conquering them, and that was what Nimrod was doing.
The Sperling Translation translates that phrase, "He began to be a despot." So he was a despot against God; and he was deceiving, he was manipulating, he was controlling those that he brought under his dominion. We have the story that we went through in Genesis 11. Satan and his demons, through Nimrod, conspired against God to bring mankind into one government against God.
Remember I said before, "God doesn't destroy those things that are good. He doesn't intervene like this unless something is evil." But this was something evil against God and against God's purpose. That's why He stepped in and confused the languages, because this was something that was going directly against God's purpose, against the timeline that God had worked out in His own mind.
There we have the first example in the Bible of people under the sway of Satan. They were under the sway because they were his children spiritually and because they were antagonistic to God's purpose. That's how you can tell. They weren't submissive to it or obedient to it.
Here we have mankind's first attempt to bring all of mankind under one government. You can see right from the very beginning in the book of beginnings, Genesis, where God shows that bringing governments together under man is not part of His purpose. That's antagonistic to God.
In Genesis 9 God had given Noah the command to "be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth," not only with the animals, but with mankind.
This maybe taking it a little bit before what we just read there in Chapter 10, because its says that Nimrod built Babel in Shinar. Evidently what we have here is a little bit of a flashback to show you that when people migrated eastward from where the ark had landed and where they had begun to settle, that they built this city in the land of Shinar.
What was it that God had said to Noah in Genesis 9:1? "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth." What they wanted to do was to build a tower in defiance of God, and build a city in which they could all gather so that they would not have to scatter themselves over the whole earth. Who was the one that they chose to lead this? Nimrod.
They chose Nimrod, who was against everything that God did, to thwart God's plan of scattering them abroad over the face of all the earth. That was their choice. They could have chosen Shem, or Noah and Shem, depending on whether Noah was still alive at the time, because it was Noah's job, and Shem's after him, to fill the whole earth with the people. But instead they chose Cush and Nimrod because their platform was, "No. Let's stay in our own little cities and stay united and build house to house (let us say) and be here cheek by jowl, and not let God tell us what to do." Instead they chose to rebel against God. They chose self-determination.
What happened is that God said, "I'm going to do what I told you to do anyway," and He confused their language and scattered them abroad over the whole earth. But they chose. That was their choice, and their punishment was a scattering and an inability to understand one another. Confusion. That just fits the mold of what we saw there in Proverbs 29:2. If they had followed the righteous leader, they would have been happy, but instead they followed the scoundrel, the wicked, and what did they have but misery. Since then things have not gotten much better.
The word before could very well be translated against. Nimrod was against; he was standing before God—and it was not in a friendly way! We will leap ahead (in terms of years anyway) into chapter eleven. We understand that the antagonist here is none other than this same Nimrod—the one against God.
Here were a people uniting themselves in disagreement against God, led by the arch-criminal who was trying to do all the uniting, Nimrod. This time, instead of wiping them out in death as He had done through the flood, God permitted them to live but segregated them by confusing their means of communication. So here they are separated from one another. All their glorious plans of building a great city and great tower had to be left off because they could not communicate with each other.
As we all know, or should know, Noah begat Ham, Ham begot Cush, and then Cush begot Nimrod. You can read this in Genesis 10. You do not need to turn there, but in Genesis 10:8-9 it says that Nimrod "began to be a mighty one on the Earth. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord." In the days after the flood, the animals multiplied much faster than the people, and the people were afraid of these wild animals. Nimrod learned to hunt, to kill these animals, and he taught others to do so as well. He trained men of like-mind into an army of sorts, and he expanded his authority and his power to far flung areas. He became a king of the people. His queen was Semiramis. She was his wife; some people believe she was also his mother. I do not know that I have found enough proof to go that route, but it's not clear to me.
Here the genealogy of descendants from Noah is interrupted with another critical footnote in the mankind’s history of empire building in enmity against God! God points out Nimrod’s blatant first attempt at one-world government under him in defiance against the Creator!
I used both of these as examples of historical footnotes of men moving away from God as recorded within genealogies because we need to see Jabez is very likely another historical footnote in history of a seminal moment when God was moving men back toward Him.
