Nimrod: Who Was the Mighty Hunter Before the Lord?
The 'mighty hunter before the LORD' who founded the first kingdoms, and whom legend made the builder of the Tower of Babel.
Nimrod is the son of Cush in Genesis 10, a mighty hunter whose kingdom began at Babel in Shinar. Later Jewish tradition made him the builder behind the Tower of Babel.
Genesis gives Nimrod only a few verses, but they are packed. Son of Cush, "he began to be a mighty one in the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the LORD." His kingdom began with "Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar," and from there he built Nineveh and other cities. In other words, he is the Bible's first empire-builder, placed in Mesopotamia. Micah 5:6 even calls Assyria "the land of Nimrod."
The Hebrew for "mighty one" is gibbor, the same word used in Genesis 6:4 for the "mighty men" born to the sons of God. Later readers noticed. The Greek Bible calls Nimrod a giant, and Jewish tradition made him the villain behind the Tower of Babel. Josephus says Nimrod urged people to build a tower too high for any flood to reach.
Legends grew around him. Jewish and Islamic stories say he threw the young Abraham into a furnace and Abraham walked out unharmed. The Book of Jasher gives him Adam's garments, which made animals kneel. Islamic tradition says he died when a gnat flew into his head. Historians have tried to match him with real rulers or gods: Sargon of Akkad, the Assyrian king Tukulti-Ninurta I, the god Ninurta, or Gilgamesh. None fits perfectly. The Assyrian ruin called Nimrud was named after him by later local tradition.
Genesis uses the same word for Nimrod, "mighty one," as it uses for the offspring of the sons of God, and the Greek Bible calls him a giant.
Most scholars think Nimrod is a composite memory of Mesopotamian kingship, possibly shaped by the god Ninurta, and that the Babel and Abraham stories were attached to him much later.
