“You Nimrod!”
This was a common insult we used in my youth. I never thought of it as Biblical, but it’s right there in scripture in Noah’s genealogies (Gen.10.) And unlike the insult that called into question the intelligence of the person it was hurled at, the Nimrod of the Bible was apparently a clever master of deception. He is called a “mighty hunter” (10:9). And in hunting deception is a critical skill. Predators have to bait, trap and or stealthily sneak up on their game all under concealment to keep their prey from scattering.
However, Nimrod’s skills of deception were more nefarious than just putting food on the table or bagging the next big buck, wooly mammoth, dinosaur, or whatever they hunted back then. Nimrod hunted with deception to trap the minds and hearts of man and kill the desire to trust God and His will. In Genesis 10:10 we are given a list of city-states that make up Nimrod’s kingdom. Nimrod appears to be the first emperor of the world after the flood.
In Genesis 11:4 Nimrod, ruler of Babel, gives the command to build a mighty city with a tower that can reach the heavens. This tower would attract people from all over the earth, baiting them to come live under the rule of the mighty Nimrod, rather than under God’s rule. And in Nimrod’s scheme they would always have this tower high above to see as a sign of his power and authority. This would have greatly appealed to a generation that was surrounded by destruction evidence from the catastrophic worldwide flood. They wanted security from another flood. Everyone who flocked to Nimrod broke their covenant relationship with God. Nimrod had set himself up as a direct adversary to God. His command in 11:4 is a direct contradiction to God’s command in 9:1 to “fill the earth.” God gave man dominion over all the earth and they were to populate and fill it while trusting in God’s love, grace and mercy for them, demonstrated by their very existence despite the destruction evidence surrounding them, and signified by the rainbow that hung in the heavens as a promise that God would never flood the world again. God made a covenant with man through Noah and Noah’s descendants broke that covenant to place their trust in Nimrod and to have what they thought would be a more permanent sign in the sky than the rainbow, which only came after the rain. People like assurances before a storm, yet God calls us to trust Him through a storm and believe that He will be there for us after the storm.
Nimrod met his match when he tried to defy God on this hunt. God sprang the trap before Nimrod’s construction project got very far off the ground. He confused their languages and Nimrod’s game scattered, fulfilling God’s plan to fill the earth. God’s will is always accomplished.
God’s rainbow is still given to us today as a sign of His mercy. He has also given us an even greater sign of His love for us in the life, death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ, His Son. And just like He mercifully saved the world through water and then established a covenant relationship with Noah and his descendants; He likewise saves us through water today and establishes a covenant relationship with us when we obey the gospel (1 Peter 3:21).
C. Dixon