 |  |
A
6.
The sons of Ham.
B
10,11. Babel (see Gen. 11:8).
A
21.
The sons of Shem.
B
25.
Divided, when it took place.
A
32-.
The sons of Noah.
B
-32. Divided after the flood.
The eldest son of Ham was Cush, and the sons of Cush are given in verse
7. Yet, strangely, verse 8 says 'and Cush begat Nimrod', thereby segregating
Nimrod from the rest of the sons of Cush by reason of his eminence. In
somewhat the same way the line of Shem is split into two when the sons of
Eber are mentioned, the line continuing through Joktan; Peleg's descendants
being reserved for the 'generations of Shem' given in Genesis 11:10 -26,
leading as it was intended down through Terah to Abram (Gen. 11:26) and so on
to the Messiah.
Let us now turn to Genesis 10:8,9, where the first reference to Babel
is found in Scripture:
'And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth.
He
was a mighty hunter before the Lord ...' (Gen. 10:8,9).
Let us pause here. The name Nimrod is from the Hebrew word marad 'to
rebel', and is so translated in Genesis 14:4 and in its twenty -three
occurrences. Not only was Nimrod a rebel, he began to be a mighty one. Here
the Hebrew word translated 'mighty' is gibbor, and this word occurs for the
first time in Genesis 6:4:
'There were giants in the earth in those days (i.e. in the days which
preceded the flood); and also After That, when the sons of God came in
unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same
became Mighty Men which were of old, men of Renown'.
There must be some reason why the record so pointedly says 'Cush begat
Nimrod'. One would be to show that Nimrod was not brought into the world in
exactly the same way as is recorded in Genesis 6. Yet the isolation of his
birth demands something out of the usual. We have no knowledge who his
mother might have been, and must leave the peculiar nature of Nimrod's birth
unexplained. He was most evidently used by Satan to further his purposes,
even as those illicit marriages furthered his fell designs both before and
after the flood. Nimrod's prowess as a hunter became proverbial, but this
hunting need not be restricted to the beasts of the field, for we find that
man has been the prey at times (Micah 7:2; Ezek. 13:18,20).
From the man Nimrod, we go to the beginning of his kingdom which was
Babel in the land of Shinar. The first city was built by Cain. The first
kingdom was founded by Nimrod, and that kingdom was vested in a city,
afterward known as Babylon. It was in the plain of Shinar that the tower of
Babel was built (Gen. 11:2), and Shinar is last mentioned in Zechariah 5:11,
where the blasphemous travesty of the ark, the Mercy seat, the cherubim and
the ten commandments, are seen going back to the house built for it in the
land of Shinar:
'Out of that land went forth Asshur, and builded Nineveh ...'
(Gen. 10:11).