We have spoken elsewhere about the Bible's very short but significant history of one Nimrod. Thus saith the Lord. What saith the facts of history? And from these facts what legends have arisen? The answer to these questions may well be a major key to the understanding of the mystery called Babylon.
The name Nimrod is sometimes spelled Nemrod, and there is today a major city by the Euphrates called Nimrud, traceable to the Biblical city of Calah, mentioned above.
Epic Security
Encyclopedia readings will inform you that this Nimrod resembles the world-renowned Gilgamesh, similarly a Babylonian hero noted as a mighty hunter.Now this Gilgamesh was "priest-king" of "Uruk," or as in the Bible, "Erech", which we know to have been built by Nimrod. Starr, in A History of the Ancient World, adds this interesting piece of information:
"One artistic symbol drawn from [the Gilgamesh Epic], that of Gilgamesh strangling a lion, was handed down age after age until it appeared in medeival cathedrals in Western Europe."
Perhaps you see faintly where our tale leads us. Let us return to the main trail of evidence.
Rabbinical traditions say that Nimrod ordered the building of a tower as an act of defiance against God. They agree with fellow Hebrew Josephus, the famed first-century historian, who states in his Antiquities of the Jews (Book I, chapter 4, vs. 1-2), that God had intended the post-flood people of earth to send colonies abroad "for the thorough peopling of the earth."(Genesis 9:1 agrees!) They disobeyed, and the tower of Babel scattering was the outcome of their disobedience.
But why did they disobey? Josephus:
"Now it was Nimrod who excited them to such an affront and contempt of God...he persuaded them not to ascribe [strength] to God, as if it was through his means they were happy, but to believe that it was their own courage which procured that happiness. He also gradually changed the government into tyranny, - seeing no other way of turning men from the fear of God, but to bring them into a constant dependence upon his [Nimrod's] power. He also said...he would avenge himself on God for destroying their forefathers!
Forerunners of humanism, "up with people" mentality, and as you will see, a whole lot more...
Nimrod has been in some places equated with Marduk, the great Babylonian god who is the central figure in pagan mythology for thousands of years. Thus Nimrod could be placed Biblically wherever the term Merodach appears. (As in Isaiah 39:1, Jeremiah 50:2)
The names "niMROD" and "MeRODach" could indeed be from the same root.
He also sounds a lot like Greece's Orion and Rome's Romulus, mighty hunter-warriors about whom fantastic tales are spun. He is in fact a mythological Everyman, one who seems to be the very source of all of Babylon's lies, the man behind the myths.
So, this man is said by God to have been the founder of the Babylonian and Assyrian kingdoms. Do you not marvel how the inspired writer passes over this fact as though it were nothing? Men make a big deal of their kingdoms; God is not impressed.
What does grip God's heart is that His creation is once more straying from Him, trying to find a visible security, especially security from future floods, but also a way to get to Heaven without relationship to the Lord of Heaven. This way of doing spiritual business is the essence of Satanic worship.
It is important to identify here the land of which Babylon was a part, the "land between the rivers." Ancient history books begin the description of this Mesopotamia with an account of Sumeria, probably the first civilization known to man. Most of Sumeria's history lies before the flood. By the time of Abraham, (2000 B.C.) it is said that the Sumerian nation vanished.
Mesopotamia then becomes host to the "Semite." The history books usually omit that the Semite is the descendant of Sem or Shem, that son of Noah who will carry on the blood line that leads to the true "Seed of woman."Semitic presence in the middle of the third millennia B.C. corroborates the Biblical story of Noahic sources for all earth's present peoples.
The Mighty Nimrod (Scarlet Threads - A History of Mystery Babylon, Part Four)
Look for Bob Faulkner's creations on http://professorenglish.org There you will find a variety of Scripture studies, including a through-the-Bible course, in video, audio, and text. There are works about the Christ, the antichrist, the rapture, and more. For those who love North Korea, I have created [http://chosunhouse.com]. As for me, I'm a man found of God over 50 years ago, called to the ministry, serving in tentmaker style with my wife and my local church in Chicagoland. Contact me at diakonos3@gmail.com
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