The first Scriptural mention of Nim'Rod is in the Table of Nations (Genesis 10). He is described as the son of Cush, grandson of Ham, and great-grandson of Noah.
Genesis 10:"The sons of Ham : - Cush, Egypt, Libya, and Canaan- were the ancestors of the peoples who bear their names."(10:6) "Cush had a son named Nim'Rod, who became the world's first great conqueror. By the Lord's help he was a great hunter and that is why people say, "May the Lord make you as great a hunter as Nim'Rod!"(10:8-9) Cush lived in the land of Shinar (Sumer) in which the first civilization after the blood was formed. The sons of Shem, the Semites were also mixed, to some extent, with the Sumerians.
This information is repeated in in the First Book of Chronicles 1:10, and the Land of Nimrod used as a synonym for Assyria is mentioned in the Book of Micah 5:6. Nim'Rod is not a character's name at all, instead it is a term of a type, or example, for other people to follow of a system that is epitomized in rebellion against the Creator. It is a well-known tale, common in Sumerian literature, of a man who fits the description. The Sumerians, the Babylonians, the Assyrians and the Hittites wrote about this type of person or kingship, and worshiped as the most popular hero type in the Ancient Mesopotamia.
Micah 5 says:"People of Jerusalem, gather your forces! We are besieged! They are attacking the Leader of Israel! (1) ... When the Assyrians invade our country and break through our defenses, we will send our strongest leaders to fight them. By force of arms they will conquer Assyria, the Land of Nim'Rod, and they will save us from the Assyrians when they invade our territory. The people of Israel who survive will be like refreshing dew sent by the Lord for many nations , like showers on growing plants. They will depend on God, not people." (5-7)
Also in the Book of Genesis the Scripture says that right after the Lord God planted a garden in Eden and putting the man He had formed there, 4 rivers formed beyond Eden from the stream of water that flowed in it and one of the rivers flowed around the country of Cush. (Genesis 2:13) The water is here a symbolic representation of the earthly kingship that the Lord permitted man to form after the Flood.
Founded by Cush, the Sumerians were very important historically and Scriptural.
The earliest of Sumerian kingship was resumed at Kish, the 1st city established in Mesopotamia after the Flood. The place gained prominence as one of the pre-eminent powers in the region during its early dynastic period. These people, very early, developed a religious-political state which was extremely binding on all who lived in it (except for the rulers, who were a law unto themselves). The system have influenced the way of life of the Ancient Near East for over 3,000 years through the cultures that developed in the land: Akkad, Babylon, Assyria, and Persia. They became the basis of Greece and Rome's system of rule.
The Scripture in Genesis 11 says, "At first, the people of the whole world had only one language and used the same words."(1) ..."Then the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which they had built, and said, "Now then, these are all one people and they speak one language; this is just the beginning of what they are going to do. Soon they will be able to do anything they want! Let us go down and mix up their language so that they will not understand each other."(5-7)
The 12th king of Kish appearing on the early post -deluge Sumerian king list (tablet), Etana, is noted as"the shepherd, who ascended to heaven and consolidated all the foreign countries." The tablet also says that "kingship descended from heaven to Kish." The king's name is found in later legendary tablets, and he is sometimes regarded as the 1st king of the civilization of Kish.
The control over the North of Mesopotamia was a prime element in legitimizing Kish's dominance. The king ruled 1,560 years before being succeeded by his son Balih, said to have ruled 400 years. The name of the 9 kings preceding Etana are all Akkadian words for animals suggesting that its population had a strong Akkadian component.
Kubaba is the only woman-queen of the Sumerian king list, which states she reined for 100 years. She is one of the very few women to have ever ruled in their own right. The list places her alone in her own dynasty, the 3rd Dynasty of Kish. Before she became a queen she was a type of woman who brewed beer for commercial sale, using a warm fermentation method, resulting in a sweet-fruity taste. The profession of brewing back in ancient Mesopotamia was principally performed by women. England continued with the tradition of women brewing beer for domestic and commercial use before the Black Death.
Kubaba became the tutelary goddess who protected the ancient city of Carchemis on the Upper Euphrates, in the late Hurrian/early Hittite period. Her cult spread later adapting her name to the main goddess of the Hittite successor kingdoms in Anatolia. She later developed into the Phrygian "mother Cybele" (matar kubileya). Her Lydian name was Kuvav which Ionian Greeks initially transcribed Kybebe, rather than Kybele. In the following century she was further Hellenized as Kybebe, daughter of Zeus.
Sumer is the earliest known civilization that took place in the region of Southern Mesopotamia, modern-day Southern Irak. Living along the Valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates, Sumerian farmers were able to grow an abundance of grain and other crops, the surplus of which enabled them to settle in one place. The earliest texts recording the ancient way of life come from its cities of Uruk and Kish and date back to 3300 BC.
The Sumerian King list, an ancient stone tablet originally recorded in Sumerian language, lists the kings of Sumer from Sumerian and neighboring dynasties, their lengths, and kingship's location. Since it was seen as handed down by the authorities in heaven the title could be transferred from one city to another.
According to Sumerian King list, Uruk (Unug-Kulaba) was founded by the king En'Merkar. Though the king-list mentions a king of E'Anna before him, the epic "En'Mekar and the Lord of Aratta relates that En'mekar constructed the House of Heaven.
Sumer was conquered by the kings of the Akkadian Empire, but Sumerian continued as a sacred language. The Sumerians re-emerged for about a century on the 3rd Dynasty of Ur, follwed by a transitional period of Amorite (Akkadian) states before the rise of Babylonia, but the Akkadian language also remained in use. The term Amurru in Akkadian and Sumerian texts means Amorite.
The first Sumerian settlement is the city of Eridu, located 12 km South West of Ur. It is considered to have been the first city in the world in which the civilization was brought, fully formed, and where 3 separate cultures fused: the peasants farmers, living in mud-bricks huts and practicing irrigation; the mobile nomadic pastoral people, living in black tents and following herds of sheep and goats; and the fishermen, living in reed huts in the marshlands.
The centres of Eridu and Uruk (biblical Erech), two of the earliest cities, were the Southern most of a conglomeration of Sumerian cities that grew around temples, almost in sight of one another. These buildings were made of mud brick and built on top of one another. With the temples growing upward and the village growing outward, a larger city was built. The temples became the most imposing structures in their respective cities, each dedicated to their own entity.
Extra-biblical traditions associated Nim'Rod with the Tower of Babel in the land of Shinar that led to his reputation as a king who was rebellious against God. The centers of his kingdom were Babylon, Erech, Akkad, and Calneh in Shinar. (Genesis 10) After the Tower of Babel, he extended his domain to the Assyrian territory and there Nim'Rod built Nineveh and Rehoboth-Ir and Calah and resen between Nineveh and Calah. Thus his mighty hunting was not confined to the chase, the hunting was his earlier token compared to what he achieved as conqueror.
Nim'Rod is the first after the Flood to found a kingdom, to unite all the fragments of scattered patriarchal rule, and consolidate them under himself as sole head master; and all this in defiance of the Lord God, the Creator of everything.
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