Genesis 10:8-9
Mighty on the earth
The genealogy breaks its rhythm to say that one man became powerful, and the phrase turns into a proverb.
People of the Bible
Nimrod
The first man in the Bible described as mighty, and the first to build an empire.
Nimrod appears in the middle of a genealogy and the list stops to describe him. He is called a mighty hunter and the beginning of his kingdom is named: Babel and the cities around it, then Nineveh and the cities of Assyria. Those two names, Babel and Nineveh, will return as the great powers that break Israel. Genesis puts them both in one sentence about one man, long before either can threaten anyone.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Nimrod
- 01
- 02
Genesis 10:10-12
The beginning of a kingdom
Babel first, then Assyria and Nineveh. The two cities that will later carry Israel away are founded in one verse.
- 03
Genesis 11:1-9
One tongue, one tower
The chapter that follows shows the project: one language, one place, one name made for ourselves, and the scattering that answers it.
Why it matters
Nimrod is the first concentration of human power in Scripture, and the account is quietly uneasy about it. The cities he founds become the archetypes of the empire that gathers, builds and dominates, which is exactly what the tower in the next chapter is trying to do.
2 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
